Denis Villeneuve has written a heartfelt tribute to director Jean-Marc Vallée following his death.

On Monday, it was announced that the Dallas Buyers Club director had died over the holiday weekend after suffering a heart attack at his cabin outside of Quebec City. He was 58.

Dune filmmaker Villeneuve has responded to the news by writing a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter about his fellow director. In the essay, he described their relationship as “competitive brothers fighting for the attention of our mother of all, the Holy Province of Quebec.”

“Jean-Marc kept saying that he was older than me and that I should respect him. He was more fit than me. More sexy than me. He knew everything about music. He was a prince. He was a rock star,” the Arrival director recalled. “He was so Jean-Marc! I deeply loved him and admired him. I don’t know what he really thought of me. Sincerely, I think I was the annoying little brother who wanted to play with his toys.”

The Oscar nominee highlighted Vallée’s complex attributes, calling him the “epicentre of all attention but highly protective of his privacy” and “a nostalgic man and an ultra modern artist”. He noted that his films were often about family in all its different forms.

“Jean-Marc loved humanity where it hurts, focussing on that hidden inner focal point of pain, shame and sorrows,” he continued. “He loved humanity, not looking for its redemption nor evolution but embracing its condition. More specifically, he was deeply moved by the tortured soul, the drop out, the marginalized. The ones baring the cross of being different in societies where being different is still a plague. His cinema was born out of pure raw gold humanity.

“With Jean-Marc, it was all about love, faith, music, passion and the unbearable loneliness of beings. He was a genius at heart and his heart was a supernova.”

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