Age: 58
male
Denis Villeneuve (born October 3, 1967) is a Canadian filmmaker. He has received seven Canadian Screen Awards as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Villeneuve's films have grossed more than $1.8 billion worldwide. Villeneuve began his career in his home country, directing four French-language dramas: August 32nd on Earth (1998); Maelström (2000); Polytechnique (2009), a dramatisation of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre; and Incendies (2010). The last of these gained him international prominence and earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. He expanded to English-language films by directing the thrillers Prisoners (2013), Enemy (2013), and Sicario (2015). Villeneuve gained wider recognition for directing science fiction films. His work on Arrival (2016) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. This was followed by Blade Runner 2049 (2017), which was critically lauded but financially unsuccessful. His next projects were Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024), a two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel of the same name. Both films were critically and commercially successful, with the former earning him Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
In 2003, during the final days of the Iraq War, an elite American military unit is sent on a covert mission to locate weapons of mass destruction hidden beneath the Zagros Mountains. When an unexpected earthquake tears open the desert floor, the squad—along with a captured Iraqi officer—plummets into the darkness below. They awaken in the ruins of an ancient subterranean temple, buried for millennia and carved with symbols of forgotten gods. Cut off from the surface, hunted by an unknown enemy, and surrounded by evidence of a long-dead civilization, the soldiers quickly realize they are no longer fighting a human war. Something lives in the shadows.
