Xavier Dolan

Xavier Dolan is an openly gay Québécois filmmaker who wrote, directed, and starred in his debut feature I Killed My Mother (J'ai tué ma mère, 2009) at the age of nineteen, winning three prizes at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. His subsequent films — Heartbeats (2010), Laurence Anyways (2012, a portrait of a trans woman and her girlfriend), Tom at the Farm (2013), Mommy (2014, which shared the Jury Prize at Cannes), I'm Still Here (2015), It's Only the End of the World (Grand Prix, Cannes 2016), and The Death and Life of John F. Donovan — established him as one of the most precocious and emotionally intense voices in international cinema. Dolan has been openly gay from the start, and his films consistently engage with queer desire, family rejection, and the search for identity. He has also directed music videos for Adele and Indochine.