During his four decades career, he became the most internationally recognized director from Quebec, winning several awards from the Cannes Film Festival, including the Best Screenplay Award, the Jury Prize, and many other prestigious awards worldwide. He won three César Awards in 2004 for The Barbarian Invasions: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film, the only Canadian director to have done so.
Arcand was born in Deschambault, Quebec, Canada. 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 master's degree in history at the Université de Montréal he became involved in film making, which gave him a new sense of direction.
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 Cotton Mill, Treadmill (On est au coton) 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, Comfort and Indifference (Le confort et l'indifférence) won the Prix Luc-Perreault from the Quebec Film Critics' Association.[5] 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 Jesus of Montreal (Jésus de Montréal) winning the same three Genie awards, plus the Jury Prize at Cannes. The movie earned him a second Academy Award nomination, becoming the first Canadian director to accomplish this achievement.
Arcand's film Days of Darkness (L'Âge des ténèbres) was chosen to close the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.[7] The press opening was subdued and the subsequent reviews were mixed.[8] Following this, he took a seven-year hiatus from feature film directing; he returned in 2014 with the film Le règne de la beauté.
In 1988, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2005.[9] In 1990 the Government of France awarded him the Legion of Honour. He finally earned from his home province one of its highest distinctions, the title of Knight of the National Order of Quebec, in 1990.[10]
In 1995, Arcand received a Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.[11] In February 2004, the government of France named Denys Arcand a Commander of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, that nation's highest cultural honour. In 2004, Arcand was also inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.[12]
Arcand is a lapsed Catholic.[15] Married a second time, neither Arcand nor Denise Robert, his producer/wife, has had children. He was 55 years old when they adopted an orphaned baby boy from China named Carter.[16] His brother Bernard Arcand (1945–2009) was a professor of anthropology, and his youngest brother Gabriel Arcand (b. 1949) is a noted Canadian actor.
