Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont (born 1958) is a French filmmaker whose stark, philosophically charged work has placed him among the most distinctive voices in contemporary French cinema. Born in Bailleul in northern France, he studied philosophy at the University of Lille and taught it to high-school students before turning to filmmaking entirely self-taught. His debut feature The Life of Jesus (La vie de Jésus, 1997) — a sparse portrait of bored, violent rural youth — and the follow-up Humanité (1999) — which won the Grand Prix at Cannes along with both leading-actor prizes for non-professionals — established his early register of austere realism, sexuality, and sudden violence. Flandres (2006) also took the Grand Prix at Cannes. From the late 2010s he turned toward absurdist comedy with Li'l Quinquin and Slack Bay (2016, in Cannes competition with Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi).