1980–1989: Early work While a student at INSAS in Brussels, Van Dormael wrote and directed
Maedeli the Breach (1980), a fiction short produced by the school. The film depicts the parallel coming-of-age stories of a boy discovering rural life after being sent to live with a relative and a girl who dreams of being a boy. Structured as a narrative told in
flashback from an old photograph, it was awarded Best Foreign Student Film at the
1981 Student Academy Awards.
Pierre Van Dormael, the director's brother, provided the film's original score. The short films that followed included both documentary and fiction works, such as
Stade 81 (1981), which focuses on the
Paralympic Games, and ''
L'imitateur (1982), which follows two individuals with intellectual disabilities wandering around and unsettling the people they encountered. Production of Toto the Hero'' took approximately ten years, with Van Dormael rewriting the script multiple times and producers raising the budget through Belgian, French and German public funding sources. The film premiered at the
1991 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the
Caméra d'Or. Critics highlighted its innovative narrative structure, which combines humour with themes of identity, childhood and the passage of time. The film brought Van Dormael international recognition as both a writer and director, with
The New York Times describing him as "a bright new talent to celebrate." Van Dormael then participated in
Lumière and Company (1995), a collective film project created to mark the centenary of cinema and presented at the
46th Berlin International Film Festival. The film brought together forty-one directors, each invited to shoot a short piece using the same type of camera employed by
Auguste and Louis Lumière, without synchronized sound and in no more than three takes. Van Dormael's 52-second contribution,
The Kiss, featured
Pascal Duquenne, who had previously appeared in
Toto the Hero. Van Dormael's second feature,
The Eighth Day (1996), marked a shift toward a more linear narrative structure compared with
Toto the Hero. The film centres on the friendship between Harry, an unhappy and recently separated businessman portrayed by
Daniel Auteuil, and Georges, a man with
Down syndrome played by Pascal Duquenne, thereby consolidating Van Dormael's collaboration with Duquenne after their earlier work together. Van Dormael developed the screenplay with the intention of building the film around a man with Down syndrome and exploring the coexistence of two parallel social worlds, one conventional and the other marginalised.
The Eighth Day premiered at the
1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the
Palme d'Or. Auteuil and Duquenne jointly received the
Best Actor Award, marking the first time in the festival's history that two actors had shared the prize. The film received four Joseph Plateau Awards and was nominated for a
César Award and a
Golden Globe Award. Following
The Eighth Day, Van Dormael did not direct another feature film for over a decade. He served as a member of the jury at the
1998 Cannes Film Festival before returning to theatre to direct ''Couldn't We Love Each Other a Little?'', which premiered at the
Théâtre des Riches-Claires in Brussels in December 2000. The play toured internationally for several years and was widely praised for its blend of dark humor, burlesque scenes, and the exploration of love and human connection.
2001–present: Prominence Van Dormael began developing
Mr. Nobody in 2001, working for six years on a screenplay that combined speculative science,
experimental cinema, and
motifs of human emotion. It became his first English-language feature due to its settings in Canada and England and was financed by a number of international companies. The film stars
Jared Leto as Nemo Nobody, the last mortal on Earth after humanity has achieved
quasi-immortality. As a 117-year-old man reflecting on his life, Nemo recounts alternative versions of his past, exploring the impact of key decisions through a
nonlinear narrative that incorporates the
multiverse hypothesis.
Mr. Nobody premiered at the
2009 Venice Film Festival, where it won the
Golden Osella. Creative disagreements between the director and studio executives over the film's running time limited its theatrical release to selected territories, while its wider availability on streaming helped establish
Mr. Nobody as a
cult classic. Chris Holt from
Starburst magazine called it "remarkable by its very existence", observing that it "manages to be both small and heartfelt as well as having epic, brilliantly conceived science fiction". At the
2010 Magritte Awards, it received a leading seven nominations and won six, including
Best Film,
Best Director and
Best Screenplay for Van Dormael. After navigating the complex and demanding production of
Mr. Nobody, Van Dormael chose to return to theatre for its more direct and flexible approach to creation. It was presented internationally, with performances at the
Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris and the
Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston, reaching an estimated audience of 180,000. Van Dormael subsequently rejoined Thomas Gunzig for his next feature film,
The Brand New Testament (2015), offering a satirical reinterpretation of Christian mythology. The film portrays God as a despotic figure living anonymously in Brussels, whose daughter
Ea rebels against him by revealing the dates of death of every human being and setting out to compose a new testament, proposing an alternative narrative centered on empathy and human agency rather than divine authority. Starring
Benoît Poelvoorde as God, alongside
Catherine Deneuve and
Yolande Moreau,
The Brand New Testament premiered at the
2015 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim. Writing for the
Los Angeles Times,
Justin Chang described it as "a clever exercise in gently heretical whimsy". It brought Van Dormael nominations for the
Golden Globe Award and the
Satellite Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and two Magritte Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Van Dormael continued his exploration of hybrid theatre with two subsequent stage works in collaboration with Michèle Anne De Mey:
Cold Blood (2016) and
Amor (2017). His experimentation with other forms of visual storytelling led him to co-write the
Blake and Mortimer comic album
The Last Pharaoh (2019) with Gunzig. Van Dormael was invited to join the project by
François Schuiten, the album's illustrator, who had previously collaborated with him on the futuristic designs in
Mr. Nobody. Writing for
Le Figaro, Olivier Delcroix described it as "a major, expansive and accomplished comic", noting that it "successfully capturing the spirit of the original series". ==Style and themes==