Brandon Cronenberg

The heritage of flesh in Toronto

Brandon Cronenberg was born in 1980 with a family name that weighed heavily on him. During his youth in Canada, he tried to escape his family destiny by turning to writing and music. But images ultimately won out when he enrolled at Ryerson University to study film.

His first real contact with the industry was no bed of roses. He worked in technical departments and learned the craft from the ground up. In 2008, he directed the short film Broken Tulips and began refining an aesthetic that many critics described as clinical.

He didn't set out to imitate his father.

In 2012, he premiered Antiviral in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. The film depicted a black market for celebrity diseases and biological obsession. It won the Best Canadian First Feature award at the Toronto International Film Festival that same year.

Eight years of silence and syringes

After his debut, the industry expected a meteoric rise. But Cronenberg vanished from the commercial radar for almost a decade. He devoted himself to smaller projects and photography while searching for funding for scripts that were considered too disturbing for major studios.

In 2019, he shot Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You. This short film, barely ten minutes long, served as a visual testing ground for what came next. The aesthetics of dreams and the distortion of reality became his main tools.

The wait was worth it.

In 2020, Possessor premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The story of an assassin who takes over other people's bodies through brain implants pushed the level of graphic violence to new heights. The uncensored version runs 103 minutes and includes scenes that forced several countries to renegotiate its age rating.

The leap into the void of 2023

With Infinity Pool in 2023, the director confirmed that his interest lies in the psychology of privilege. He shot on location in Croatia to bring to life a resort where the wealthy can clone themselves to avoid the death penalty. The film grossed just over five million dollars at the box office.

He prefers working with director of photography Karim Hussain. Together they have developed a visual language based on primary color filters and vintage lenses that distort the edges of the screen. They avoid digital effects whenever the budget allows for building latex prosthetics.

And the gamble paid off.

Filming for his TV project titled Dragon is planned for late 2024. The production is backed by independent studios that accept his terms of total creative control. The contract stipulates that the final cut belongs exclusively to the director.