Glen Pitre

Born at Cut Off, Louisiana, Glen Pitre worked his way through Harvard by fishing shrimps each summer. By age 25, American Film magazine dubbed him "father of the Cajun film" as his low-budget, local dialect costume dramas broke house records in bayou country cinemas. With the help of the Sundance Institute, his internationally-lauded 1986 Belizaire the Cajun (1986) became his first English-language production. Since then Pitre's works in a variety of media, frequently in collaboration with wife Michelle Benoit, have earned him numerous awards, grants and honors, including a knighthood from France. In 2003, film critic Roger Ebert acclaimed Pitre "a legendary American regional director."