Mireille Dansereau (born December 19, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian director and screenwriter who is known for "emulating the style and approach of her aesthetic role model, John Cassavetes".

Biography

Mireille Dansereau was a dancer for 15 years before turning to filmmaking. After finishing her studies at the University of Montreal, she made her first film, a short entitled Moi, un jour... for Expo 67. The film was well received and enabled her to move to London, England to attend the Royal College of Art. She obtained her Master's Degree in Film and Television and made another short film, Compromise, which won first prize at the 1969 Great Britain Student Film Festival. Dansereau worked a variety of jobs - researcher, script assistant, sound recorder - before returning to Quebec. There, she co-founded L’Association Coopérative de Productions Audio-visuelles (ACPAV) and became the first woman in Quebec to direct a fiction feature film in the private sector; the film, La vie rêvée (1971) was produced by the ACPAV and became a landmark that received a wide theatrical release and national critical acclaim.

She joined the NFB following her success and directed 2 feature documentaries for the En tant que femmes Series, J'me marie, j'me marie pas (1973) and Famille et variations (1977). She returned to the private sector to directed her next fiction feature, L'Arrache-Coeur (1979), a bleak, and penetrating examination of a marriage in crisis which earned Dansereau a Genie Award for Best Screenplay nomination, and Le Sourd dans la ville (1987), a dark, disturbing and experimental adaptation of Marie-Claire Blais's novel centered on a rooming house.