Multidisciplinary, Michel Duran is simultaneously an actor, director, athlete
and digital content creator.
From an early age, through doors first opened by his mother, a physical education teacher, Michel Duran became deeply involved in sport—first as a soccer player, then as a pole vaulter, and later as coach of the newly formed French national ski mountaineering team.
As a student, he earned a Master’s degree in exercise physiology from the Faculty of Medicine in Saint-Étienne, followed by an MBA from EM Lyon Business School.
The organization of a round-the-world expedition combining sailing, mountaineering, cycling, dog sledding, and whitewater kayaking led him to cross the Atlantic Ocean aboard the sailboat Pen Duick VI and ultimately to settle with his young family in Vancouver in 1997, while searching for the expedition’s training base camp.
In 2004, he redirected his professional career toward film and theatre, undertaking intensive actor training and, in 2006, founding CMHL Enterprises, a production company dedicated to developing and producing films and live performances.
His body of work includes the short films The Window and California Balloons, as well as Une Nuit à Versailles, a live performance inspired by Molière’s play Sganarelle, or The Imaginary Cuckold and set to 17th-century Baroque music. He later produced two feature films, Soufflé au Chocolat and Truth.
He spent the following two years focusing on the commercial side of filmmaking, promoting Soufflé au Chocolat, his first feature film, at various film markets and festivals. In 2013, the film was screened at the Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois et Francophone and the Sonoma International Film Festival (USA), and received five nominations at the 2013 Leo Awards (Canada), including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, and Original Score.
As for the rest, a picture is worth a thousand words—which is why www.michelduran.com exists.
