13 months after announcing his retirement, Xavier Dolan returns with an astonishing project – Cinema News

In July 2023, Xavier Dolan announced that he wanted to move away from cinema. During the last Cannes Film Festival where he was President of the Un Certain Regard Jury, the 35-year-old director nevertheless declared to the microphone of Les Inrockuptibles “They didn't understand what I said. There is an incompatibility between my desire for cinema and the framework proposed today by the industry. But who knows? Maybe it will change. I would like to return to cinema.“

And this return will be quicker than expected since the multi-award-winning director confided during the Podcast Without Filter that his time at the Cannes Film Festival had awakened in him the “desire to create”, adding that not being in the process of creating made him sick.

A horror film set in France in 1880

“I'm working on a film that I wrote before the pandemic and that I released again. It's a genre film, a horror film, set in 1880 in France. It's further from my life and what I know. However, when I reread it, I realize that it's a film about the fear of failure, the fear of being rejected, of being misunderstood, the difficulty of creating. I realize that unconsciously I'm returning to the same themes but at a time that I don't know but that I want, in a style that I want and a completely different proposition. I feel that I can surpass myself, learn, grow but with themes that are dear to me but in horror.”

Asked about the progress of the project by the presenters, Xavier Dolan added that he had taken the existing script without really changing its structure but had refined the writing and finished it: “I'm going on a trip to finish writing it. I never finished it. I have 20 pages left.” (…)

We still don't know the story, which actors will be in the cast and when this horror film will be released. Xavier Dolan is also writing a new series. A strong comeback for this cinema prodigy.