As much as we love it when a guest picks a pre-ordained canonical legend – a David Lynch, an Akira Kurosawa, a Martin Scorsese – there’s a lot of value in the left-field choices. Like, say, Bruno Dumont. That was not a name we were expecting to hear when we asked guest David Caesar who he wanted to talk to us about, but it turned out to be one of the more fascinating and eclectic filmographies we’ve ever covered on the show.

Before we get into Dumont, David joins us to look back at some of the key films of the month, including Steven Soderbergh’s basketball business drama High Flying Bird, Mimi Leder’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex, Dan Gilroy’s high-art horror-drama Velvet Buzzsaw, and Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk.

Then, we talk look at some of the interviews Steven Soderbergh has been giving to promote High Flying Bird, and whether or not his approach to streaming distribution could help lift a flailing Australian film industry.

Further reading:

• We look at Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird this month. If you can’t get enough Soderbergh (and, frankly, who can?) check out our Steven Soderbergh episode
• Before we reviewed On the Basis of Sex, we looked at the documentary RBG here, in what we’re hoping will be a regular Ruth Bader Ginsburg review slot
• That episode of the podcast More Perfect that delves into RBG’s approach of precedent-setting anti-sex discrimination cases by defending men, can be heard here
• The Steven Soderbergh interviews that sparked our middle topic can be read here: Deadline, Indiewire, The Atlantic
• Is David right about Netflix being US$10 billion in debt? Amazingly, yes
• Here’s Bruno Dumont in The Guardian discussing the incredible Bernard Pruvost and his facial tics in P’tit Quinquin and Coincoin
• Yes, Australia lags behind the world in directors making more than one film

And finally, for those who doubt that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s husband is as handsome as Armie Hammer, here’s a photo of RGB with her beloved:

Kidding. Here they are:

Outro music: Cause I Knew, written by Lisa Hartmann, performed by Lisa Hartmann and Didier Hennuyer, from P’tit Quinquin (2014)

The latest episode of Hell Is For Hyphenates, featuring David Caesar talking the films of Bruno Dumont, can be heard on Stitcher Smart Radio, subscribed to on iTunes, or downloaded/streamed directly from our website.

Our next guest is a prolific Aussie filmmaker who’s been working steadily in both film and television for years.

You might know him from his collaborations with Ben Mendelsohn in Australiana comedies Idiot Box (1996), Mullet (2001) and Prime Mover (2009). He also made the period crime comedy Dirty Deeds (2002), featuring Bryan Brown, Toni Collette, John Goodman, Sam Neill, and Sam Worthington, and directed the TV-to-film adaptation Nowhere Boys: The Book of Shadows.

He’s been prolific on television, directing episodes of RFDS, Water Rats, All Saints, Miss Fisher’s Muder Mysteries, Underbelly, Love Child and many more.

For audiences of a certain generation, he’s perhaps most recognisable from his role as one of the judges on Race Around the World, the 1997 ABC series that propelled John Safran to fame. Caesar was, for our money, the first iteration of the quintessentially antagonistic “mean” TV judge, and should really be sent regular royalties from Simon Cowell and all the other imitators.

But forget all that, because David’s about to experience his greatest credit to date: that of Hell Is For Hyphenates guest host!

Which filmmaker has he chosen to talk about on the show?

None other than Bruno Dumont!

Dumont has been making feature films since the late 1990s, first known for his gritty rural French dramas La vie de Jésus (1997) and L’humanite (1999), the latter of which won him the Grand Prix at Cannes. He’s dipped his toe into existential horror with Twentynine Palms (2003), gone to war in Flandres (2006), and explored the effects of religion in Hadewijch (2009) and Hors Satan (2011).

He often works with nonprofessional actors, but has recently begun collaborating with stars like Juliette Binoche for the period biopic Camille Claudel 1915 (2013) and the high-concept comedy Ma Loute (2016).

Dumont has also worked in TV, his mini-series P’tit Quinquin (2014) becoming a smash hit and prompting him to make the follow-up Coincoin et les z’inhumains (2018), which you should really track down immediately.

He has just wrapped production on a sequel to his 2017 film, Jeanette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc (2017), a musical about Joan of Arc featuring young Joan headbanging to the heavy metal she’s also singing. Seriously. It’s a trip.

As you can probably tell, Dumont is clearly one of the most interesting filmmakers working today. But what is it about his films that appeals to David so much? Join us on February 28 when we find out!