Acclaimed Quebec filmmaker Michel Brault, known for his pioneering work in cinema verité style, passed away on Saturday at the age of 85.

Brault was en route to accept the Bull’s Eye Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Film North festival in Huntsville.

“Michel Brault was a champion of Canadian cinema and among Canada’s short list of trailblazing filmmakers of the 20th century. His works were the anchor of cinema verité and the precursor of reality-style filmmaking,” said Film North executive director Lucy Wing in a statement Sunday.

The festival honoured Brault with a screening of his 1964 film Genevieve, following the lifetime achievement award presentation.

Brault, a filmmaker, screenwriter, cinematographer and producer, won the 1975 Cannes Film Festival award for best director for Les Ordres, a documentary-style drama about five innocent civilians incarcerated during Quebec’s FLQ crisis in 1970. Brault also received four Canadian Film Awards for the film, which was selected as Canada’s best foreign language film entry for the 48th Academy Awards.

Early in his career, Brault co-directed and was cinematographer on the NFB short film Les Raquetteurs (1958), which explores the celebration and ritual around a snowshowing competition in Sherbrooke. The film “marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB’s newly formed French Unit,” writes the NFB on its website, where the film can be viewed, along with some of Brault’s other works. As a cinematographer, Brault also worked on such films as the landmark Mon oncle Antoine (1971) and Kamouraska (1973), both directed by Claude Jutra.

Among the many accolades Brault received throughout his more than 50-year career were the Governor General’s Award in 1996 and the Prix Jutra lifetime achievement award in 2005.

Image of Brault, as part of Capturing Reality, via the NFB