Denis Côté


Denis Côté is an independent filmmaker and producer living in Quebec, of Brayon origin. His experimental films have been shown at major film festivals around the world.

Life and career

Côté was born in Perth-Andover, New Brunswick, Canada. He studied film at Collège Ahuntsic in Montreal and founded nihilproductions around 1994. He made a number of short films, including Kosovolove and La sphatte. He has also been a film critic on radio, at ici magazine from 1999 to 2005, and vice-president of the Quebec association of film critics.
In 2005, his first feature film, Drifting States , won the Golden Leopard - Video at the Locarno International Film Festival, as well as the Woosuk Award at the Jeonju International Film Festival.
His 2007 film Our Private Lives was filmed in Bulgarian. The 2008 film All That She Wants , his third feature film, won the silver Leopard for best directing at the Locarno International Film Festival and Best Canadian film at the Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie. Jean-Michel Frodon, editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma at the time, made it one of his top 10 picks for best film of 2008.
In October 2008, there was a retrospective of his work at the Cinémathèque québécoise.
The 2009 documentary Carcasses was presented at the Cannes Film Festival at the Directors' Fortnight in May 2009. It was part of the Canada Top Ten at the Toronto International Film Festival.
At the end of May 2010 at the Festival TransAmériques, he created a video accompaniment for the play Cendres directed by Jérémie Niel.
The 2010 "short" film The Enemy Lines was part of the Jeonju Digital Project at the Jeonju International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere.
In August 2010, his feature film Curling was presented at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it won the prize for best directing as well as the prize for best actor. It was released in France in October 2011, to positive critical reviews.
At the end of October and beginning of November 2010, the Viennale presented a retrospective of his work, as did the Festival de La Rochelle in 2011.
His 2012 documentary Bestiaire, filmed at Parc Safari in Hemmingford, Quebec, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was also shown at the Berlin Film Festival.
Côté also produced the film Mona's Daughters by Rafaël Ouellet in 2007. His 2013 film Vic and Flo Saw a Bear premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Alfred Bauer Prize. Vic and Flo Saw A Bear was screened in about 90 film festivals, was released in a dozen countries and to this day, Denis Côté's work has been offered more than 20 retrospectives around the world. In 2014, he returned to Berlinale with a new essay film Que ta joie demeure.
For his ninth feature film Boris Without Béatrice in 2016, Côté teamed up with local star actor James Hyndman and imagines the life of fictitious businessman Boris Malinovsky. The film premiered at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in 2016.
In 2015, Ministry of Culture and Communications officially named Côté a Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters.
A Skin So Soft features six real-life bodybuilders and had its world premiere on August 4, 2017 at the 70th Locarno International Film Festival. Variety praised the 'eclectic approach' of the film. The Upcoming UK called it a 'bewitching and admirable piece of work'. Shot in winter 2018 but screened in Competition at Berlinale 2019, Ghost Town Anthology is a return to a more narrative version of Côté's signature. Based on a poetic novel by young auteur Laurence Olivier and uniting a stellar cast of local stars and newcomers, Ghost Town Anthology sees the dead silently return to a small rural town following the suicide of a young man. The film opens to positive reviews, hits the festival circuit and is seen as a mournful drama that defies genre categorization. The film received 10 nominations at the local Quebec Prix IRIS.
Few months after the release of this film, Denis Côté embarks on a new journey called Wilcox. Shot in six days on a shoestring budget and edited in 2 weeks by colleague and filmmaker Matthew Rankin, the project follows a fictional mysterious wanderer, happily lost in the Canadian wilderness. The 72nd Locarno International Film Festival hosted the film in its Fuori Concorso sidebar section.

Filmography