Robert Lantos

2016 Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award (Screens and Voices (formerly Broadcasting and Film))

Film and television producer

In a career spanning over four decades, producer Robert Lantos has helped develop many of this country’s leading filmmakers. He built Alliance Communications Corporation, Canada’s first major production and distribution studio, which later—with the launch of the Showcase and History networks—expanded into broadcasting. He produced, invested in and exported to the world films by Denys Arcand, Jean‑Claude Lauzon, Robert Lepage, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Patricia Rozema and many others.
 
Robert Lantos was born in Hungary in 1949. He grew up in Uruguay and immigrated to Montréal with his family at the age of 14.
 
He has adapted important Canadian literary works for the screen, among them Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version and Joshua Then and Now, Brian Moore’s Black Robe and The Statement, Paul Quarrington’s Whale Music, George Jonas’ Vengeance, Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces, and Stephen Vizinczey’s In Praise of Older Women.
 
His films The Sweet Hereafter, Sunshine, Being Julia, Eastern Promises and Barney’s Version were nominated for Golden Globes and/or Academy Awards. With David Cronenberg’s Crash and Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, he won top prizes at the Cannes film festival. Black Robe, The Sweet Hereafter, Sunshine and Ararat have all won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture.
 
He is also the architect of many long-running dramatic television series, among them “Due South,” “E.N.G.” and “Night Heat”, all of which won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Dramatic Series.
 
Robert Lantos is a Member of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television award for Outstanding Contribution to the Business of Filmmaking. He is an inductee in the Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame and holds an honorary doctorate from McGill University.