Biography

Marie-Hélène Cousineau is a Canadian film director and producer. Originally from Quebec, she moved to Igloolik, Northwest Territories (now in Nunavut) in 1990, where she became a co-founder of the filmmaking collective Arnait Video Productions.Her most noted film, Before Tomorrow (Le Jour avant le lendemain), was co-directed with Madeline Ivalu and released in 2008. Cousineau and Ivalu were shortlisted Genie Award nominees for Best Director, and alongside co-writer Susan Avingaq for Best Adapted Screenplay, at the 30th Genie Awards in 2010. Cousineau later collaborated with Ivalu on the film Uvanga, and with Avingaq on the documentary film Sol. Sol is a feature documentary, that explores the mysterious death of a young Inuit man, Solomon Uyurasuk. As the documentary investigates the truth to Solomon's death, it sheds light on the underlying social issues of Canada's North that has resulted in this region claiming one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world.

More recently, Cousineau has collaborated with Ivalu on Restless River, an adaptation of Gabrielle Roy's unpublished work La Rivière sans repos, previously translated and published as Windflower.