What do we know about Gilles Villeneuve?
He’s the first Canadian to win a Formula 1 race, which happened to be the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, and he’d go on to win six Grand Prix races across six seasons before his tragic death in 1982. He is a member of the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, and is largely considered one of the most charismatic and iconic racers to have ever lived.
But before all the fame and Ferraris, what defined Villeneuve as a young man and drove him to achieve such greatness is what Canadian director Yan Lanouette Turgeon sought to capture in his French-language biopic ‘Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend’. The film made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend.
“It felt like that’s what the interesting days were, how he got to be the driver he was, and his struggle to get there,” Lanouette Turgeon told sportsnet.ca in Toronto. “And it became this underdog story of him against money, and it made a lot of sense. Sometimes it’s not being on top of the hill, it’s how you get there.”
The film does indeed focus on Villeneuve’s early life, from stealing his father’s car in the middle of the night to race with friends, to taking up music as a trumpet-playing teenager initially obsessed with becoming the next Miles Davis. As we get to see in the film, Villeneuve chased greatness long before he ever lined up on the grid for the first time.
“There was such a great connection between the music and the art of driving,” continued the director, a Québécois himself. “It felt so connected for some reason, his passion for music and how he was yearning for something bigger even as a musician, and when he decided to go for racing, he had the same aspirations as the ones he had if had become a musician.”
Starring Québec native Rémi Goulet as Villeneuve, the film then followed his jump to racing — first in a snowmobile, where he would win the 1974 World Championship Snowmobile Derby, and then later in Formula Atlantic, the stepping stone to Formula 1 itself. Villeneuve was so single-minded in pursuit of that ultimate goal that he sold his home without telling his wife Joann (played by Rosalie Bonenfant) to finance his race seat, and convinced sponsors in the Quebec business community to back him without ever having seen him race.
“It was all about capturing that charisma and the aura that he had around him,” Goulet told sportsnet.ca in Toronto. “He had this thing that you can’t explain.”
There’s a lot of authenticity on display as well, as we get treated to real archival footage of Villeneuve in snowmobiles or on racetracks around Canada — “real Gilles moments,” as Lanouette Turgeon calls them. There’s even a cameo that eagle-eyed F1 fans might spot. It’s not a person, but a place: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal makes multiple appearances throughout the film via a number of pit stop scenes during Villeneuve’s early races in Formula Atlantic.
One of the most lived-in pieces of his famed career found in this film appropriately comes in the form of two cars that the Gilles Villeneuve Museum in Berthierville, Québec lent to the production. Keeping the cars in pristine shape was certainly a priority, but did Lanouette Turgeon or any of the cast and crew get a turn in the cockpit?
“You bet I did,” the director admitted with a laugh. “I had a blast, really. At some point, our VFX crew who were shooting the races […], they called me and said, ‘Do you want to drive one?’ I said, ‘You’re damn right, I do!’”
With ‘Villeneuve: Rise of a Legend’ tabbed as the TIFF Closing Night Gala, the study of Villeneuve’s early life will be unveiled further next month as Québec audiences get a limited theatrical release. A wide release will hit theatres in 2027 — 50 years after Villeneuve made his Formula 1 debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix.
Not a bad time to be reacquainted with a Canadian sports legend.
