Léon: The Professional is a 1994 English-language French action-thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, and features the film debut of Natalie Portman. The plot centers on Léon (Reno), a professional hitman who reluctantly takes in twelve-year-old Mathilda Lando (Portman) after her family are murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade. The film was released in France by Gaumont and internationally through Gaumont Buena Vista International on 14 September 1994, and received mostly positive reviews from critics.
Luc Paul Maurice Besson is a French filmmaker. He directed or produced the films Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), and La Femme Nikita (1990). Associated with the Cinéma du look film movement, he has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Léon: The Professional (1994) and the English-language The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element (1997). He wrote and directed the 2014 sci-fi action film Lucy and the 2017 space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
The Fifth Element is a 1997 English-language French science fiction action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson, as well as co-written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. It stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, and Chris Tucker. Primarily set in the 23rd century, the film's central plot involves the survival of planet Earth, which becomes the responsibility of Korben Dallas (Willis), a taxicab driver and former special forces major, after a young woman (Jovovich) falls into his cab. To accomplish this, Dallas joins forces with her to recover four mystical stones essential for the defence of Earth against the impending attack of a malevolent cosmic entity.
Anne Parillaud is a French actress who has been active since 1977. She is best known internationally for playing the title character in Luc Besson's film La Femme Nikita.
La Femme Nikita, also called Nikita in France, is a 1990 French-language action thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. The film stars Anne Parillaud as the title character, a teen criminal who is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering policemen during an armed pharmacy robbery. Her government handlers fake her death and recruit her as a professional assassin. After intense training, she starts a career as a killer, where she struggles to balance her work with her personal life. She shows talent at this and her career progresses until a mission in an embassy goes awry.
Valérian and Laureline, originally titled Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent and also commonly known as Valérian, is a French science fiction comics series, created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières. It was first published in Pilote magazine in 1967; the final installment was published in 2010. All of the Valérian stories have been collected in comic album format, comprising some twenty-one volumes plus a short story collection and an encyclopædia.
Éric Serra is a French composer. He is a frequent collaborator of film director Luc Besson.
Jean-Jacques Beineix was a French film director best known for the films Diva and Betty Blue. His work is regarded as a prime example of the cinéma du look film movement in France.
Le Dernier Combat is a 1983 French post-apocalyptic film. It was the first feature film to be directed by Luc Besson, and also features Jean Reno's first prominent role. Music for the film was composed by Éric Serra. The film was the first of many collaborations between Besson, Reno and Serra. A dark vision of post-apocalyptic survival, the film was shot in black and white and contains only two words of dialogue. It depicts a world where people have been rendered mute by some unknown incident.
Cinéma du look was a French film movement of the 1980s and 1990s, analysed, for the first time, by French critic Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma issue no. 449, May 1989, in which he classified Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as directors of the "look".
Maïwenn Aurélia Nedjma Le Besco, known mononymously as Maïwenn, is a French actress and filmmaker.
EuropaCorp S.A. is a French motion picture company headquartered in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and one of a few full service independent studios that both produces and distributes feature films. It specializes in production, distribution, home entertainment, VOD, sales, partnerships and licenses, recording, publishing and exhibition. EuropaCorp's integrated financial model generates revenues from a wide range of sources, with films from many genres and a strong presence in the international markets.
The Arthur series refers to a series of fantasy novels for children written by Luc Besson, a film director and producer, and published from 2002 to 2005 in France, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Lockout is a 2012 English-language French science fiction action film directed by James Mather and Stephen Saint Leger, and written by Mather, Saint Leger, and Luc Besson. It is both Mather and Saint Leger's feature directorial debuts. The film stars Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Vincent Regan, Joe Gilgun, Lennie James and Peter Stormare. The plot follows Snow (Pearce), a man framed for a crime he did not commit, who is offered his freedom in exchange for rescuing the President's daughter Emilie (Grace) from the orbital prison MS One, which has been taken over by its inmates, led by Alex (Regan) and his psychotic brother Hydell (Gilgun).
The Lady is a 2011 British biographical film directed by Luc Besson, starring Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi and David Thewlis as her late husband Michael Aris. Yeoh called the film "a labour of love" but also confessed it had felt intimidating for her to play the Nobel laureate.
No Limit is a French television action-adventure series created by filmmaker Luc Besson with Franck Philippon through Besson's EuropaCorp company. Along with Transporter: The Series, it represents one of Besson's first forays into television, although this time as a writer as well as a producer.
The Cité du Cinéma or Studios of Paris is a film studio complex originally supported and founded by the film director and producer Luc Besson, located in Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, in a renovated power plant, commissioned in 1933 to power the Parisian metro. The studio complex is intended to be a competitor of Cinecittà in Rome, Pinewood in London and Babelsberg in Berlin. It was inaugurated on 21 September 2012. In February 2022 Tunisian-French film producer Tarak Ben Ammar finalized a deal to purchase Studios de Paris.
Lucy is a 2014 French science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson for his company EuropaCorp, and produced by his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. It is an English-language film shot in Taipei, Paris, and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, and Amr Waked. Johansson portrays the titular character, a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic, psychedelic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a 2017 space opera film written and directed by Luc Besson, and produced by his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. It is based on the French science fiction comics series Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin, illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, and published by Dargaud. It stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as Valerian and Laureline, respectively, with Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu and Rutger Hauer in supporting roles. Besson independently financed and personally funded the film. With a production budget of around $223 million, it is both the most expensive European and the most expensive independent film ever made.
Sand Van Roy is a Belgian-Dutch actress and advocate for victims of sexual violence.
