Jaco Van Dormael

A former circus clown and children's theater producer, Jaco Van Dormael turned to filmmaking in the early 1980s, writing and directing a series of internationally award-winning shorts, documentaries and promotional films. In 1991, he made his feature film debut with the highly original "Toto le Heroes/Toto the Hero" (1991), a poignant, impressionistic chronicle that used a child's sensibilities and feelings to trace the life of an angry, disappointed man from birth to death and beyond. The film won the Camera d'Or prize for best first film at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. He then solidified his position as an important director with "Le Huitieme jour/The Eighth Day" (1996), starring Daniel Auteuil as a harried executive whose life is changed through his encounter with a man with Downs Syndrome.