‘I don’t really want to do this job anymore’: At the ripe old age of 34, a polarizing filmmaker announces their retirement

Director, actor, and writer Xavier Dolan has been making critically acclaimed arthouse movies since the tender age of 19 when he first burst onto the scene at Cannes with his directorial debut J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother).

In the following decade and a half, the boy wonder has written, directed, and produced a further seven films of his own (as well as doing costume design on a number of the productions), while also starring in numerous other movies as an actor, and taking on a fair few other jobs in the industry. However, in a recent interview with the Spanish outfit El Pais, it seems he’s ready to give up his short-lived but bright-burning career of making widely-lauded independent films.

In an in-depth interview, with an alarming headline that references his fear of an upcoming civil war, openly queer Dolan was brutally honest about not only the impact that the film industry was having on him but also how he felt the world, in general, was sliding into an irreparable mess. The young talent — who’s also directed music videos for Adele, had dozens of appearances as a voice actor dubbing over famous films in his native Quebec French (including in the Twilight series, and numerous roles in the Harry Potter franchise), and won a fair amount of prizes for his work — said the following about his decision:

“I don’t really want to do this job anymore. I’m tired. We are in 2022, and the world has changed drastically. Me, in that world, I no longer necessarily feel the need to tell stories and to relate to myself. I want to take time to be with my friends and family. I want to shoot commercials and build myself a house in the country one day when I have enough money saved. I don’t say that in a sad way at all. I just want to live something else, other experiences.”

He added:

“I don’t understand what the point is of telling stories when everything around us is falling apart. Art is useless and dedicating oneself to the cinema, a waste of time.”

With that said, Dolan didn’t just blame the state of the world for his newfound apathy, but also commented on the film industry’s role in his decision to quit, and implied that a focus on boring, generic blockbusters and big-time names was squeezing the life out of independent, arthouse cinema:

“I don’t feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees. I put too much passion into it to have these disappointments. It makes me wonder if my filmmaking is bad, and I know it’s not.”

Of course, it’s easy to joke that at the age of 34 Dolan has hardly lived enough of life to be tired. But, then again, that is a bit of a boomer take and ignores the fact that older generations have left younger ones with a world that’s broken in so many ways that even looking directly at the state of it is enough to cause a panic attack.