Van Dormael spent his childhood travelling around Europe, before going on to study filmmaking at the INSAS in Brussels, where he wrote and directed his first short film, Maedeli la brèche (1981), which received the Honorary Foreign Film Award at the Student Academy Awards.

Van Dormael's feature debut, Toto le héros (1991), won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

This trauma may partly account for the recurring themes in his films, which explore the worlds of people with mental and physical disabilities.

[2] After developing an interest in filmmaking, he enrolled at the INSAS in Brussels and later the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière in Paris.

[7] Van Dormael made his feature-length debut in 1991 with Toto le héros (Toto the hero), a tale about a man who believes his life was "stolen" from him when he was switched at birth, told in a complex mosaic of flashbacks and dream sequences, sometimes with almost a stream of consciousness effect.

[8] Toto le héros was ten years in the making as Van Dormael rewrote the script at least eight times.

[9] Van Dormael premiered Toto le héros at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Camera d'Or.

[14] The Kiss is the 52-second film made by director Jaco Van Dormael featuring actor Pascal Duquenne.

He wanted to make a more linear film than Toto le héros, one which explored the world through the eyes of a man with Down syndrome.

Van Dormael's next film, Le huitieme jour (The Eighth Day), accomplishes this with the chance meeting and friendship between Georges, played by Pascal Duquenne, and Harry, an unhappy divorced businessman portrayed by Daniel Auteuil.

Van Dormael began seeking to film Mr. Nobody in 2001, an attempt that lasted six years before the director was able to make his English-language feature debut in 2007.

The film utilizes nonlinear narrative and the many-worlds interpretation to tell the life story of the last mortal on Earth, Nemo Nobody, portrayed by Jared Leto.

[26] Mr. Nobody had its world premiere at the 66th Venice International Film Festival on 12 September 2009, where it won the Biografilm Award and the Golden Osella for Outstanding Technical Contribution.

[33] In August 2014, Van Dormael began filming his fourth feature film, Le Tout Nouveau Testament (The Brand New Testament), with Catherine Deneuve, Yolande Moreau and Benoît Poelvoorde, a comedy in which God (Poelvoorde) is alive and lives in Brussels with his daughter.

[36] His films also typically end with a death, which is portrayed not as a tragedy, but as a happy moving on where the deceased looks down happily at the world below.