Robert Lepage

Robert Lepage (b. 1957, Quebec) began studying at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique de Québec in 1975. Then after a year's internship in Paris (1978) he began writing, directing and acting for the theatre. He gained fame with his innovative directorial approach to a wide repertoire of plays, and in the 1990s he even directed Shakespeare at London's Royal National Theatre. In the same period when he founded his multidisciplinary production company Ex Machina (1994), he debuted with a writer-director feature, The Confessional (Le confessional, 1995), screened at Cannes. In addition to being one of Canada's foremost men of the theatre, he has shot a total of five films, distinctive for their formal and narrative experimentalism: Le Polygraph (1996), Nô (1998) and Possible Worlds (2000). All of his films have been shown at the Karlovy Vary IFF. For his latest film, The Far Side of the Moon (2004) he won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2004 Berlinale.

MFF Karlovy Vary