Teen director rules Cannes Directors’ Fortnight

It’s news like this that reminds me to haul ass and finish another screenplay. 19 year-old Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan has swept three of the four feature-category Directors’ Fortnight prizes on offer at Cannes. Dolan landed the Art Cinema Award, the Regards Jeunes Prize and the SACD Award for his debut feature “I Killed My Mother.”

The film, which Dolan wrote, directed, produced and stars in, is a semi-autobiographical portrait of the dysfunctional  relationship between a gay 16 year-old and his single mother, and has attracted substantial buzz since bowing on the Croisette. Screen Daily raves:

A stunning, semi-autobiographical tour de force from writer/director/producer/performer Xavier Dolan, it is a film with the sting of shrewdly observed truth … I Killed My Mother succeeds so well because it reflects a truth about human relationships that any viewer can recognise. The bond between Hubert and Chantale may be more extreme and exaggerated than most but in the pettiness, manipulations, reconciliations and heartache it expertly conveys the way we all have the ability to hurt the ones we love the most.

It’s at points like this that I prefer not to think about what I was doing when I was 19. Okay, so I was a university sophomore like a million other normal folks, so no shame in that, but it’s sobering all the same. Congratulations to Dolan — I look forward to checking out his film.

Meanwhile, in another of the subsidiary competition strands at the festival, French-Algerian director Nassim Amaouche took top honors at the Cannes Critics’ Week for his debut feature “Goodbye Gary.”

The film, an ensemble piece revolving around the inhabitants of a small working town, including a young boy who believes his father is Gary Cooper, follows in the footsteps of such former Critics’ Week champs as Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu’s “Amores Perros” and Miranda July’s “Me and You and Everyone We Know.” Variety has the full list of winners here.