Denys Arcand – Les Invasions barbares

It has been, to say the least, a whirlwind year for Denys Arcand. The 62-year-old filmmaker has reestablished himself over the last 12 months as Canada’s champion in the art of filmmaking – a comeback of George Foreman proportions.

Les Invasions barbares, which opened May 9 in Canada, went on to receive numerous international awards, culminating in a best foreign-language Oscar Feb. 29. The film earned Arcand a Gold Lion for best screenplay at the Cannes International Film Festival, best director and screenplay honors at France’s prestigious Les Cesar awards, and the same at the Prix Jutra. Arcand was also named Playback’s Person of the Year for 2003, an honor he shared with his wife and producer Denise Robert.

Arcand’s curtain call stands to be this year’s Genie Awards, where he is nominated in the best director category as well as for original screenplay. He already has best director Genies for Le Declin de l’empire americain (1986) and Jesus de Montreal (1989). Both films also earned Arcand screenplay honors.

Invasions is, if not necessarily a sequel, then a revisiting some 15 years later of the principal characters in Declin. To date, Invasions has earned over $7 million in Canada and millions more around the world.

Arcand, who began his career making documentaries at the National Film Board in the early 1970s, has a long list of credits to his name on the big and small screens, including Le Crime d’Ovide Plouffe, Love and Human Remains and Stardom. In 1997, he won a Gemini for direction on the MOW Joyeux Calvaire.

Robert Lepage – La Face cachee de la lune

If ever there was a renaissance man of Canadian arts, then Robert Lepage is surely he. The internationally renowned filmmaker, playwright, performance artist and designer has earned praise and critical acclaim for his contributions to theater through plays such as Circulations, The Dragon’s Trilogy, Polygraph and Tectonic Plates. He has produced operas including Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung, and is currently collaborating with Cirque du Soleil. Lepage was the first North American to direct a Shakespeare play at London’s Royal National Theatre, and he also conceived and directed the stage work for Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Tour in 1992.

The 46-year-old artist’s latest contribution to filmmaking, La Face cachee de la lune, has earned critical praise including a handful of Genie nominations. Aside from the director nod, the film also garnered Lepage nominations as best actor and for best adapted screenplay. La Face cachee de la lune is also nominated for best motion picture.

Lepage won a Genie in 1996 for his directorial debut, Le Confessionnal, which also earned him the Claude Jutra Award for direction of a first feature film.

Additionally, Lepage was nominated for a Genie in 1996 for Le Polygraphe (direction and screenplay), 1998 for No (screenplay) and most recently in 2000 for Possible Worlds (direction). Lepage is a recipient of l’Ordre National du Quebec, the Herbert Whittaker Drama Bench Award for outstanding contribution to Canadian theater and the prix Denise-Pelletier, Quebec’s highest honor in the field of stage arts. Lepage is also a member of France’s Legion of Honor.

Guy Maddin – The Saddest Music in the World

You might say Guy Maddin has spent the last 20 years emerging. Having launched his career in 1985, an overnight success the 48-year-old is not. But a success he is all the same. Maddin has gained a cult following thanks to a succession of off-the-wall cinematic experiments, both long and short form, including Tales from the Gimli Hospital, his 1988 feature debut, for which he received a best original screenplay Genie nomination. Other features include 1990’s Archangel, named experimental film of the year by the National Society of Film Critics, and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, which featured the likes of Frank Gorshin and Shelley Duvall.

Maddin, who started out working at a bank, entered the mainstream (if anything he is attached to can be called that) in 2002 with the International Emmy-winning television ballet movie Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, which also earned him a Gemini for direction in a performing arts program or series. Maddin also won a Genie in 2001 for best live-action short for The Heart of the World.

But Saddest Music, the story of a contest held in Winnipeg in the 1930s that brings together musicians from around the world to see who can play the saddest song, stands to be Maddin’s breakout. For his efforts, the filmmaker is up for best director honors.

Its four Genie noms are just the latest in a string of triumphs for this unconventional black-and-white film starring Isabella Rossellini, shot in Winnipeg in the cold of winter. To date, Saddest Music has earned critical praise and coveted slots at Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival.

Jean-Francois Pouliot – La Grande seduction

Having cut his teeth selling everything from cars to burgers, it’s little wonder that Quebec helmer Jean-Francois Pouliot’s feature film debut is a certified crowd pleaser, with tickets selling like McDonald’s hotcakes. With over $8 million in box-office receipts after 35 weeks in release, Pouliot’s La Grande seduction has established itself as one of Quebec’s all-time box-office leaders and established Pouliot as one of Canada’s premier filmmakers. The film opened in July against Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and beat the Disney hit by earning a record $902,697 during its first weekend in its home province.

The 47-year-old Pouliot got his start at Montreal-based Cossette Communication-Marketing, Canada’s largest advertising agency, where he rose to the position of artistic director and manager of francophone advertising for McDonald’s restaurants. For the last 15 years he was a top commercial director on the roster of Quebec commercial production house Fabrique d’Images, where he won a Silver Lion at the prestigious Cannes Advertising Festival for an ad for Loto-Quebec.

Last year, Pouliot returned to the French Riviera with his feature debut, which was chosen as the closing-night film of the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

In February, La Grande seduction led Prix Jutra recipients with eight wins, including the Billet d’or Desjardins for the highest box-office gross. Pouliot lost out to Denys Arcand in the director category.

Charles Martin Smith – The Snow Walker

It’s a long way from cruising the strip in small-town California circa 1962 to the icy tundra of Canada’s north. Charles Martin Smith is probably glad he didn’t have to make the trip in a ’56 T-Bird convertible (the heaters, not to mention the cloth tops, in those classics were notoriously fussy).

All the same, the 50-year-old Hollywood character actor – who made his name as Terry ‘The Toad’ Fields in American Graffiti (1973) – will be happy to have made the trip. With the release of the acclaimed The Snow Walker, based on a Farley Mowat story, Vancouver-based Smith has firmly established himself in the pantheon of Canadian directors.

With nearly 50 turns in film and TV, both here and south of the border, Smith has seen it all. His credits include films as varied as The Untouchables, The Buddy Holly Story and the film version of another Mowat classic, Never Cry Wolf. It was during the making of Never Cry Wolf that Smith decided to immigrate to Canada.

In the director’s chair, Smith made in his mark with Boris and Natasha (1992) and more significantly with the 1997 Disney hit Air Bud, a US$3-million Canada/U.S. copro that went on the earn over US$24 million at the North American box office. The film won the Genie Golden Reel award for highest-grossing Canadian feature of the year. That year, Smith also directed the premiere two-hour TV movie that launched the WB series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But if Air Bud was his coming-out as a commercial success behind the camera, then The Snow Walker will surely establish Smith as a filmmaker to be taken seriously. The Snow Walker is one of the best-reviewed English-language Canadian films of the year and has also earned nine Genie nominations, including a pair for Smith, for direction and adapted screenplay.

Smith was also executive producer on the 2000 feature film Here’s to Life!, starring James Whitmore and Eric McCormick, which was nominated for eight Genie awards.

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