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Arcand was born in Deschambault, Quebec. He grew up in a devoutly Roman Catholic home in a village about 40 km southwest of Quebec City. He attended Jesuit school for nine years. Entering his teen years, the family moved to Montreal and although he dreamed about being a professional tennis player, while studying for a Masters Degree in history at the Université de Montréal he became involved in film making that gave him a new sense of direction. During his university days, he and several friends would drive 600 km to New York City every few months to take in European films playing there that were not available in Quebec.

In 1963, he joined the National Film Board of Canada where he produced several award-winning documentaries in his native French language. A social activist, he made a feature-length documentary in 1970 titled On est au coton (We work in Cotton) that showed the exploitation of textile workers. The film caused an uproar that resulted in it not being distributed publicly for several years. Arcand received such publicity that it gave his fledgling career a great boost. He also worked on some television series, notably Duplessis, a historical work he wrote (but did not direct) about Premier Maurice Duplessis.

During the early part of the 1970s Arcand produced a number of feature films that received critical acclaim. Arcand returned to directing documentaries and did no work for television. In 1982, his documentary, Le confort et l’indifférence won the Best Film prize from the Quebec Film Critics’ Association. In 1986 he wrote and directed what was until then the highest grossing film in Quebec (and Canadian) history, The Decline of the American Empire (Le Déclin de l’empire américain). At the Canadian Genie Awards, it captured best film, best director, and best writer of an original screenplay. It also won the “International Critics Prize” at the Cannes Film Festival and became the first Canadian feature film nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Three years later Arcand repeated this award-garnering performance with his widely acclaimed 1989 film Jésus de Montréal (Jesus of Montreal) winning the same three Genie awards, plus the “Jury Prize” at Cannes.

Arcand produced and directed his first English language film in 1993, titled Love and Human Remains, and did so again in 2000, with the film, Stardom, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival. He then spent two years writing the script for what many claim is his finest piece of cinematic writing to date, The Barbarian Invasions (Les invasions barbares). Released in 2003, the film won Arcand the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Language Film and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In addition, Denys Arcand was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.

The Barbarian Invasions won France’s 2004 César Award for Best Picture and Best Director plus the César Award for Best Original Screenplay.Arcand’s film Days of Darkness (L’âge des ténèbres) was chosen to close the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.The press opening was subdued, as opposed to receiving a standing ovation as with The Barbarian Invasions and the subsequent reviews were mixed. —Wikipedia.org

An influential cinematographer, director and writer, Michel Brault worked as a professional photographer before finding himself in the field of cinema, thanks to the encouragement of his friend and colleague Claude Jutra. Brault collaborated with Jacques Giraldeau on Petites médisances (1953–1954, 39 episodes), a series made using the innovative new principles of the "Candid Eye movement.” In 1956, he joined the National Film Board, where he worked as a cameraperson on a number of Candid Eye series films, most notably The Days Before Christmas (1958, directed by Terence Macartney-Filgate).

That same year, Brault co-directed Les raquetteurs (1958) with Gilles Groulx, a work that was heralded as a sort of manifesto for the NFB’s francophone filmmakers. Defending a different approach to cinema, from then on Brault was part of a new documentary process that was equally technically innovative and artistically innovative. He worked on several films that have become classics; for instance, La lutte (1961), which he photographed, edited and co-directed with Claude Fournier, Claude Jutra and Marcel Carrière; Golden Gloves (1961), directed by Gilles Groulx; and Québec USA ou l’invasion pacifique (1961), also co-directed with Jutra. In photographing all of these films, Brault deliberately used the fluid style of movement developed through his signature method of carrying the camera on his shoulder. He also made use of a wide-angle lens, which put him at the heart of the action and close to his subjects.

In California, in 1959, Brault met the father of cinéma-verité, the Frenchman Jean Rouch, a man who would greatly influence his future. In 1961, he collaborated with Rouch and Edgar Morin on Chronique d’un été (France). During the shoot, he helped develop a new camera, the KMT Coutant-Mathot, the forerunner to the documentary cameras created by the Éclair corporation. In Europe, he collaborated with numerous filmmakers and refined the practice of a cinematic style already known as direct cinema.

Affected by the ethical issues surrounding his art form, Brault’s cinema reached new heights with Pour la suite du monde (1963) (co-directed with Pierre Perrault), a masterpiece of direct cinema. In search of more autonomy, he left the NFB in 1965 to found Nanouk Films. However, he did return to collaborate with the NFB a few more times. His political activism pushed him toward the question of national identity, an issue that can be found in such films as Un pays sans bons sens! (1970) and L’Acadie, l’Acadie?!? (1971), both co-directed with Perrault.

It was during the 1970s that he undertook two important series. The first one was Le son des français d’Amérique (1974–1976, 13 episodes; 1977–1980, 14 episodes), which he made at Nanouk Films and co-directed with André Gladu about the traditional music of French-speaking people throughout North America. The second notable series was La belle ouvrage (1977–1980, 22 episodes), made with the NFB. Brault photographed the series, which dealt with nearly obsolete occupations and traditional customs, and was co-directed by Bernard Gosselin, Léo Plamondon, Claire Boyer and Diane Létourneau.

Brault, who was active in feature length fiction since his collaboration with Claude Jutra on À tout prendre (1963), slowly gave up his documentary practice. His interest shifted to fiction, a form he embraced because it “doesn’t pretend to be the truth and therefore is not a lie.” His cinematography appears in several major works of Quebec fiction, including Jutra’s renowned Mon oncle Antoine (1971) and Francis Mankiewicz’s acclaimed Les bons débarras (1980). One of his most powerful fictional pieces as a director is the acclaimed Les ordres (1974), a film about the October Crisis that was strongly influenced by direct cinema. It won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival and four Genies.

Since 1988, he has made several pieces for television. Over a lengthy period in the 1990s, he produced two feature length films, Mon amie Max (1994) and Quand je serai parti… vous vivrez encore (1999), and later, shot Jacques Godbout’s Anne Hébert, 1916-2000 (2000). —Pierre Véronneau

Atom Egoyan’s parents were painters and he studied International Relations and music at the University of Toronto where he began making short films: “Howard in Particular” 1979, “After Grad with Dad” 1980, “Peep Show” 1981 and “Open House” 1982.

While he has several distinguished Television and Opera works on his resume and such pictures as his debut “Next of Kin” 1984, Berlin and Moscow International Film Festival-winning “Family Viewing” 1987 and “The Adjuster” 1991 – his most critically acclaimed creation is The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and his most famous work is the astonishingly clever film-in-film Ararat (2002)

4 time Cannes Film Festival winner and the most famous Armenian filmmaker since Sergei Parajanov, the Egypt-born, Canada-bred, Oscar-nominated master of indie cinema, has collected an impressive 4 awards from the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.

A 7 time recipient of Canada’s top Genie Awards, he is a remarkable figure in contemporary independent filmmaking. —IMDb