At only 34 years old, Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan announces his retirement. The director and actor is tired of the film industry.
He bows out. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País Wednesday July 5, Canadian director Xavier Dolan announced his retirement. “I renounce cinema and directing”, revealed the 34-year-old filmmaker.
The director mentions in particular the failure and the cost of his new series, The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up, released at the beginning of the year. “I have not won anything with the series. I invested my salary in the production and my father had to lend me money.” The cinema prodigy then said he was discouraged by this experience: “I no longer have the desire or the strength to commit to a project for two years so that almost no one sees it. I put too much passion into it to be so disappointed.”
“I wonder if my cinema is bad”
“By force, I wonder if my cinema is bad, when I know it is not”, he blurts out. In the columns of the Spanish daily, Xavier Dolan is worried about the future in general. “I don’t understand what’s the point of striving to tell stories while the world is collapsing around us. Art is useless, and devoting oneself to the cinema a waste of time”he blurts out.
This is not the first time that Xavier Dolan has made this speech. At the end of his series The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Uphe explained that he wanted to take a break in his career, “exhaust” by filming. In an interview with the newspaper The world in January 2023 on this occasion, Xavier Dolan already entrusted his “weariness of trade, profession and industry”. And the filmmaker adds: “I feel like I said everything I had to say. For a long time.” He said, however, that he did not want to completely turn his back on the cameras: “I’m going to advertise, and I never said I was quitting acting!”
Aged 34, the Canadian director has eight feature films to his name, including Mommy crowned by the César for best foreign film in 2015 and the Jury Prize at the 67th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, or even Just the end of the worldwhich won him the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and the César for best director.
Actor in some of his films like Imaginary lovers Or Matthias and Maximehe is also featured in a dozen other productions, such as lost illusions by Xavier Giannolli released in 2021. His latest project, The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Upis an adaptation of the eponymous play by Michel Marc Bouchard, broadcast on Canal+ at the beginning of the year.