Guy Maddin
Personal details
  • Born:
    • Birthday: 1956-02-28
    • Born Place: Winnipeg, Canada

Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin CM OM is a celebrated Canadian screenwriter, director, author, and artist, born on February 28, 1956, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is widely known for his singular and instantly recognizable cinematic style that meticulously recreates the look and feel of silent or early-sound-era films, blending them with surrealism, melodrama, and dark comedy. Maddin's films often feature deliberately scratchy footage, archaic cinematic techniques like intertitles, and themes drawn from mythology, memory, and his own psycho-sexual relationship with his hometown of Winnipeg, which he explored in his acclaimed "Me Trilogy" including the pseudo-documentary My Winnipeg (2007). His debut feature, the cult classic Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), established his unique aesthetic. Other notable works include Careful (1992), The Saddest Music in the World (2003), and his frequent collaborations with Evan and Galen Johnson, such as The Forbidden Room (2015) and the 2024 political horror-comedy Rumours. Maddin's work has earned him numerous international awards, including multiple National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Experimental Film and an Emmy for his ballet film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002), and he was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2012.

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