Matt Bissonnette (director)

Benedict Matthew Bissonnette, usually credited as Matt Bissonnette, is a Canadian film director and writer.^[1]

Bissonnette and his childhood friend Steven Clark collaborated as codirectors and cowriters of the 2002 film Looking for Leonard.^[2] On his own, Bissonnette followed up with the films Who Loves the Sun in 2006,^[3] Passenger Side in 2009,^[4] and Death of a Ladies' Man in 2020.^[1]

Bissonnette's films frequently use the literary or musical work of Leonard Cohen as a thematic motif; Looking for Leonard centred in part on a character's fantasies of escaping her life to run away with Cohen after reading his novel Beautiful Losers, while both Passenger Side and Death of a Ladies' Man use Cohen's music in their soundtracks.^[5] His film Death of a Ladies' Man shares the title of Cohen's 1977 album of the same name.

He also works in advertising as a commercial director,^[5] and published the novel Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock in 2008.^[6]

He is the brother of actor Joel Bissonnette,^[4] and was married to actress Molly Parker from 2002 to 2016.^[7]