Biography

Fans of his work reportedly include Michael Haneke, Brian De Palma, John Waters, Yorgos Lanthimos, Antonio Campos and Paul Schrader.

1.4 million viewers watched Li'l Quinquin (2014) when it was first broadcast in France in Sept. 2014.

Taught philosophy in his 20s and 30s.

His first two features are in the Criterion Collection: The Life of Jesus (1997) and Humanity (1999).

His father was a doctor.

You see, I feel I have a political duty to reach out to the general public. I want to make films that the people want to see. So if the people want to see Johnny Depp or Tom Cruise, then it is really my job to incorporate them into my films.

The people follow what the media say. So if you said that Bruno Dumont is fantastic, it follows that more people would go to see my films. I have no wish to remain on the sidelines. I have no wish to make films that are only seen by bohemians in London and Paris.

Cinemascope is a format I like a lot because it is very hard to handle. Because there's too much. There's too much on the sides, it's hard to do a close-up, for example, because you pick up the sides, but I find it's quite correct in the balance we were talking about. I mean that it's possible to do 'thinking shots'. Because it's no longer in the geometry of our thinking. So it's a constraint, but the constraint is quite fair since it brings in the outside, the sides, all the organic material of things and it relativizes the character. I think characters need to be relativized. The 'Scope shot does it naturally. [2014]

[on Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)] In my tradition, one can heroize any individual. That's a revolution that isn't so much pictorial, as it is philosophical. All my films are about this path. Like in the paintings by Hugo van der Goes [1440-1482] or Pieter Brughel [1525-1569] one can take any individuals and make heroes out of them. [2014]

I'm not a naturalistic filmmaker at all. My work is all about transfiguration. It's an entirely poetic world. It's totally surrealist. But the only way to strive for reality is to go through reality. That's the paradox. [2014]