Bruno Dumont (; born 14 March 1958) is a French

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

and

screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

. To date, he has directed twelve feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His films have won several awards at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...

. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both ''

L'Humanité (; ) is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organisation of the SFIO, ''de facto'', and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, would not exist." History ...

'' (1999)(1999) and '' Flandres'' (2006).

Life and career

Dumont has a background of Greek and German (Western) philosophy, and of corporate video. His early films show the ugliness of extreme

violence Violence is characterized as the use of physical force by humans to cause harm to other living beings, or property, such as pain, injury, disablement, death, damage and destruction. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence a ...

and provocative

sexual behavior Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g., masturbation) t ...

, and are usually classified as

art film An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...

s. Later films bring novel twists to other movie genres like comedy or musicals. Dumont has himself likened his films to

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...

, and he typically uses long takes, close-ups of people's bodies, and story lines involving extreme emotions. Dumont does not write traditional scripts for his films. Instead, he writes complete novels which are then the basis for his filmmaking. Dumont is known to cast nonprofessional actors in his films. In a 2019 interview for the Criterion Channel, Dumont explained: "If I believed in the ideal, I'd hire a professional actor, and I'd tell them, 'Act like this because this is the truth. Since I don't believe in the ideal, I hire nonprofessional actors...because I believe that anyone is a holder of the truth." He says that some of his favorite filmmakers are

Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or sho ...

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Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...

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, and

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. He is frequently considered an artistic heir to

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. His often polarizing work has been connected to a recent French cinéma du corps/cinema of the body, encompassing contemporary films by

Claire Denis Claire Denis (; ; born 21 April 1946) is a French film director and screenwriter. Her feature film '' Beau Travail'' (1999) has been called one of the greatest films of the 1990s and of all time. Her work has dealt with themes of colonial and p ...

, Marina de Van,

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, and

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, among others. According to Tim Palmer, this trajectory includes a focus on states of corporeality in and of themselves, independent of narrative exposition or character psychology. In a more pejorative vein,

James Quandt James Quandt is a Canadian film historian and festival programmer, best known as the longtime head programmer of the TIFF Cinematheque program of film retrospectives.Geoff Pevere, "The ghosts of cinema Cinematheque summer series Cinematheque's summe ...

has also talked of some of this group of filmmakers, as the so-called New French Extremity.Quandt, James, "Flesh & Blood: Sex and violence in recent French cinema", ''ArtForum'', February 200

Access date: 10 July 2008. His 2011 film '' Hors Satan'' premiered in the ''

Un Certain Regard (; 'A Certain Glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films with unusua ...

'' section at the

2011 Cannes Film Festival The 64th Cannes Film Festival took place from 11 to 22 May 2011. American actor Robert De Niro served as the president of the jury for the main competition. American filmmaker Terrence Malick won the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize, for t ...

. His 2013 film '' Camille Claudel 1915'' premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Dumont is an atheist.

Filmography

Feature films

Television

* ''P'tit Quinquin / Li'l Quinquin'' (2014) * ''Coincoin et les Z’inhumains / Coincoin and the Extra-Humans'' (2018)

Short films

* ''Paris'' (1993) * ''P'tit Quinquin / Li'l Quinquin'' (1993) * ''Marie et Freddy / Marie and Freddy'' (1994)

References

External links

Official site
*
Flandres official site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dumont, Bruno 1958 births Living people European Film Awards winners (people) French film directors French atheists People from Bailleul, Nord