Not Only Dune: Incendies and 3 Other Denis Villeneuve Movies You Haven't Seen

Denis Villeneuve is one of Hollywood's top directors today. Before he became the director of Dune and Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve made a name for himself in his native Canada, directing several auteur films that shaped his cold, detached style and dark poetics.

1. Maelstrom, 2000

Maelstrom is the portrait of a young woman trying to assuage her guilt and pull herself out of depression. Here, Villeneuve turns the female image on its head: from a giver of life, a woman is transformed into a perpetrator of cyclical violence and death.

The main character has an abortion and then fatally strikes a local fisherman. The depressed woman has a chance to restore the disturbed balance of the universe – she falls in love with the dead fisherman's son.

2. Incendies, 2010

When brother and sister Marwan read their mother's will, they were astonished. Her last wish was to find their father, whom the twins believed to be dead, and their brother, whose existence they did not even suspect.

Jeanne and Simon learn that their mother carefully concealed many of the circumstances of her tragic fate.

In Incendies, the director universalizes both the language and the landscape of his own film: passions stretch from Quebec to an unnamed country in the Middle East, and the conflict becomes a true Greek tragedy.

3. Polytechnique, 2009

December 6th, 1989, Montreal. It was a normal school day, and there was nothing to indicate trouble. But that very day, a young misogynist picked up a rifle and went to the local polytechnic to commit a massacre.

With documentary meticulousness, Polytechnique shows the fateful hours of students – physicists and engineers – whose lives are cut short because of one man.

In just over an hour, Villeneuve creates an incredible expressiveness with handheld shots, playing with depth of field and a tense alternation of sound and silence.

4. August 32nd on Earth, 1998

A young woman named Simone is in a car accident. Miraculously unharmed, she rethinks her life, quits her job and decides to have a child. She chooses her best friend Philippe to be the father. He agrees, but on the condition that the conception take place in the desert of the Great Salt Lake.

Villeneuve first presented his debut film at Cannes, where it was warmly received, and a few years later he was hailed as Quebec's most ambitious director.

August 32nd on Earth is the closest to Villeneuve's later visionary films. The vast expanses of the Salt Lake City desert, where the couple went to conceive a child, recall both scenes from Sicario and the sandy landscapes of Arrakis.