AUSTRALIAN director George Miller is at a highpoint in a masterful career. His “Mad Max: Fury Road” won a swag of awards, adding to a long list of acclaimed movies, and this week he will bask in the glory of presiding over the Cannes film festival jury.

    Even missing out on the best director gong at this year’s Oscars, won by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for “The Revenant,” could not take the gloss off the success of the latest of his post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” action movies, released last year.

    “You’d be a fool to be disappointed when we did so well,” the 71-year-old director told The Sydney Morning Herald on returning to the city in March after the movie won six Academy Awards and four British Baftas.

    As a writer, director and producer, Miller is a pioneer of Australian cinema - with a career that runs from the original 1979 “Mad Max” starring a young, leather-clad Mel Gibson, to “Babe” and the feel-good animated classic “Happy Feet” in 2006.

    Miller was part of a renaissance of Australian cinema in the 1980s, which included Peter Weir (“Dead Poets Society”, “The Truman Show”), Bruce Beresford (“Driving Miss Daisy”) and Phillip Noyce (“Patriot Games”,”Salt”).

    But his career in cinema was not always assured, with Miller at first setting out to be a doctor, and working in the medical profession for a time.

    He has said that working as an emergency doctor, and seeing “the kind of carnage as a result of car accidents or bike accidents,” affected him deeply and went on to influence his violent “Mad Max” movies.

    “It kind of disturbed me quite a bit. And I think all those things were part of the mix of the ‘Mad Max’ films,” he told Australian Screen Online in a 2006 interview.

    After the original smash hit, Miller went on to make “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” (1981) and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (1985), but “Fury Road” was a long time coming.

    In the meantime, he produced the coming-of-age film “The Year My Voice Broke” (1987) and the thriller “Dead Calm” (1989) — which launched his compatriot Nicole Kidman on the world — as well as Australian television series such as “Vietnam” and “Bodyline.”

    The Cannes film festival starts Wednesday and runs until May 22.(SD-Agencies)