Xavier Dolan Says Next Genre Film Has “A Lot Of Comic Elements”

When Xavier Dolan stated that he was retiring from filmmaking because “art is meaningless” and “the world is burning,” I gave him around a year to backtrack and announce a new project.

A little less than a year later, Dolan told a French outlet that heading the jury of this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes reinvigorated him. He has dusted off a project he wrote before the pandemic, and is now putting the finishing touches on what will be his ninth feature film. (via IONCINEMA).

Speaking at the Lumière Festival (via Deadline), Dolan spoke about this next film, which he describes as “genre” with “comic elements.”

“It’s going to be a genre film, that’s for sure,” said Dolan. “Is it going to be a horror movie? I might have spoken too soon. There’s a lot of comic elements in the writing. There will certainly be horror moments, but it’s rather an amalgam of lots of genres.”

He added, “It will be the second chapter, the second half of a career where I slowed down to the point of nearly stopping. I know I could never sustain the same rhythm that I had before. I was younger and I was different.”

The film is set in 1880s “Parisian literary world” and will be shot in that city. He is aiming for a fall 2025 shoot, which means a Cannes 2026 premiere would be the best possible outcome for his return to the Croissette.

One can call Dolan’s rise in the 2010s as a “sensation,” having directed seven films in his twenties, for which he received multiple awards, including winning the Jury Prize at Cannes for 2014’s “Mommy” — still his best film.

Dolan has become this polarizing figure among cinephiles. After surprising the film world, in his mid-20s, with well-received fare such as “Laurence Anyways,” “Mommy,” and "Tom at the Farm,” his last three (“Matthias & Maxime,” “The Death and Life of John F. Donovan,” and “It’s Only the End of the World”) were not as critically acclaimed.