Denis Villeneuve 

Canada

Un 32 aout sur Terre differs from Cosmos in its tone and approach. Whereas the latter film was an urban, gritty take on modern youth, Un 32 is more fantastical and philosophical. Pascale Bussieres (When Night is Falling) plays a young woman whose life changes after an automobile accident. She's not physically harmed in the accident, but mentally she's completely undone. She quits her job and tries to prevail upon her best friend to father her child, a request which sees the pair end up in the Utah desert. 
 
Villeneuve is another director to have achieved local fame for music videos, but his ouevre is much larger than just that. In the music video field, he won first prize and directed 20 short videos  in the Europe-Asia Race 1990-1991, put on by public TV network Radio Canada. He also won a Felix award for 1994's best video of the year for Daniel Belanger's Ensorcelee, three 1995 awards for his Cirque du Soleil video Querer and the best French language video at the 1996 Much Music awards for Tout simplement jaloux, by perennial Quebec pop group Beau Dommage.

Other Villeneuve credits include TV commercials, and a short National Film Board of Canada film, which won a Special Jury prize at the Locarno film festival. Villeneuve has also written an impressionistic travel notebook, based on his trip to Jamaica. 

Considering that superstar English Canadian director and Cannes winner Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) also dabbles in other fields, like opera, if Villeneuve wins at Cannes, Quebec may just have an international celebrity of its own to crow about soon. 
Shlomo Schwartzberg