Director of films and music videos, photographer, musician, painter, author... An artist in the full scale of the spectrum, a loner excelling in depicting the marginalised, the outcast, the ignored and the alienated who live on the fringes of society... An independent director and producer who could defy the mainstream, but would not always reject it, Gus Van Sant has almost always been controversial in the themes and characters he picks for his films... "I guess I'm interested in sociopathic people in life and in my movies," he states. Indeed, he has in focus a hardware store owner falling for a teenager Mexican immigrant in the no-budget Mala Noche, a family of drug addict friends in the road movie Drugstore Cowboy, two male prostitutes, of which one is narcoleptic, in My Own Private Idaho, a murderously ambitious whether report girl in To Die For, two young men, both named Gerry lost in the desert in Gerry, high school students who massacre their classmates in the Palm d'Or winning Elephant, and a rock star not able to cope with fame in Last Days. His style has matured into a minimalist, contemplative, experimental one that defies convention in the 2000s, nevertheless, whether be it a mainstream or an independent and heartfelt project, it's as if a certain wave of sorrow haunts us in each and every Gus Van Sant film. And he honestly admits that he is still "learning stuff, [filmmaking] is a process of continually learning things."