The Hollywood Reporter Award - Xavier Dolan

At 34 years old, Xavier Dolan is already a cinema veteran. At 16 he wrote the screenplay for I KILLED MY MOTHER, which he filmed at 19 and right away caused a sensation at Cannes: a teenager with an unconditional style shows how a very personal film about a queer boy can strike a chord with an entire generation. Born in 1989 in Montréal, Quebec, he subsequently cemented his reputation as a Canadian wunderkind with the equally autobiographically tinged love triangle comedy HEARTBEATS.

After these pop-queer self-reflections, in which he plays with cinematic forms and finds truths in the realm of the artificially exaggerated, the transgender drama LAWRENCE ANYWAYS is a radical departure. In 2014, with TOM AT THE FARM, he ventured into genre cinema, constructing a provincial drama about lies and secrets as a psychological thriller. His films remain demanding and challenging, like the intense mother-son drama MOMMY or the intimate IT'S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD, in which a terminally ill young man tries to reconcile with his family.

And as Dolan matures, so do his characters; in his last film to date, 2019's MATTHIAS & MAXIME, he looks at the friendship of two twenty-somethings with a certain serenity. And with the miniseries THE NIGHT LOGAN WOKE UP, he is now entering uncharted territory once again. The only constant in Dolan's work is that he remains, in all the best ways, unpredictable.

The talk lasts approx. 45 minutes.

Free entrance with ticket!