Dune Director Denis Villeneuve’s Career Long Quest for Identity

With films like Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, Denis Villenueve is the official go-to director for a heady brand of epic science fiction. And while sci fi trappings have dominated his recent work, a career-long exploration of identity has defined his work to a much greater extent. All of his films have asked fundamental questions about what defines a person, what makes them who they are. Here follows a brief history of Denis Villenueve and identity.

Before adapting Frank Herbert’s classic novel with Timothee Chalamet, before Harrison Ford reprised one of his most iconic roles as a maybe replicant Rick Deckard, before Amy Adams talked to aliens with Jeremy Renner, before Emily Blunt was swept up in a cartel thriller with Benecio Del Toro and Josh Brolin or Hugh Jackman tortured Paul Dano in Prisoners or Jake Gyllenhaal met his own doppelganger in Enemy, the French Canadian filmmaker studied the impact that trauma, violence, a character’s actions, even cosmic chance has on ones sense of identity. From a mass murderer in Polytechnique, to discovering a mother’s mysterious past in Incendies, to the magical realism of potential parenthood in August 32nd and Maelstrom, Villenueve constantly explores the boundaries of what makes a person who they are.

This video was written by Siddhant Adlakha, edited by Tom Jorgensen and Clint Gage, with titles designed by Casey Redmon.

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