Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits include Breathless (1960), That Man from Rio (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Borsalino (1970), and The Professional (1981). He was most notable for portraying police officers in action thriller films and became known for his unwillingness to appear in English-language films, despite being heavily courted by Hollywood. An undisputed box-office champion like Louis de Funès and Alain Delon of the same period, Belmondo attracted nearly 160 million spectators in his 50-year career. Between 1969 and 1982, he played four times in the most popular films of the year in France: The Brain (1969), Fear Over the City (1975), Animal (1977), Ace of Aces (1982), being surpassed on this point only by Louis de Funès.
Robert Bresson was a French film director.
William Lincoln Christie is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He is a specialist in baroque and classical repertoire and is the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants.
Marlène Jobert is a French actress and author.
Claude Berri was a French film director, writer, producer, actor and distributor.
Robert Lepage, is a Canadian playwright, actor, film director, and stage director.
Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the boulevard theatre. He was the son of a leading French actor, Lucien Guitry, and followed his father into the theatrical profession. He became known for his stage performances, particularly in boulevardier roles. He was also a prolific playwright, writing 115 plays throughout his career. He was married five times, always to rising actresses whose careers he furthered. Probably his best-known wife was Yvonne Printemps to whom he was married between 1919 and 1932.
Les Misérables is a 1995 film written, produced and directed by Claude Lelouch. Set in France during the first half of the 20th century, the film concerns a poor and illiterate man named Henri Fortin who is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels to his own life. The film won the 1995 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Pickpocket is a 1959 French film written and directed by Robert Bresson, the first for which Bresson wrote an original screenplay rather than adapting an existing work. It stars Martin LaSalle, who was a nonprofessional actor at the time, in the title role, and features Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie, and Jean Pélégri in supporting roles. The film is generally considered to be one of Bresson's greatest films.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a Belgian novelist, photographer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir, second volume of the « Cycle of Marie », a four-tome chronicle published over ten years and displaying the separation of Marie and her lover. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie, third volume of the cycle, won the Prix Décembre.
Natalie Dessay is a French singer, known for her former career as an operatic soprano. She gained wide recognition after her portrayal of Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann in 1992, and then performing at leading stages, such as the Paris Opera, Vienna State Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera.
The Bait, also known as Fresh Bait, is a 1995 French film directed by Bertrand Tavernier about two boys and a girl who commit a murder, with the girl acting as the "bait".
Jean-Daniel Pollet was a French film director and screenwriter who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. He was associated with two approaches to filmmaking: comedies which blended burlesque and melancholic elements, and poetic films based on texts by writers such as the French poet Francis Ponge.
Pierre Étaix was a French clown, comedian and filmmaker. Étaix made a series of short- and feature-length films, many of them co-written by influential screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. He won an Academy Award for best live action short film in 1963. Due to a legal dispute with a distribution company, his films were unavailable from the 1970s until 2009.
La Tour Montparnasse Infernale is a 2001 French crime comedy film directed by Charles Nemes and co-written and starred by Eric Judor, Ramzy Bedia and Pierre-François Martin-Laval. When it came out in cinemas in Canada, it was translated into Don't Die Too Hard in reference to Die Hard. The movie is a box office success, grossing 20.6 million for a budget of 9.6 million. A prequel, La Tour 2 contrôle infernale is released in 2016
The Sicilian Clan is a 1969 French gangster film based on the novel by Auguste Le Breton. The film was directed by Henri Verneuil and stars Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura and Alain Delon, whose casting led to the film's box-office success in France. Ennio Morricone composed the score for the picture.
Pierre Kast was a French screenwriter and film and television director.
Six in Paris is a 1965 French comedy-drama anthology film.
Le Miracle des loups is a French historical drama film from 1924, directed by Raymond Bernard, written by André-Paul Antoine, starring Jean-Emile Vanni-Marcoux. The scenario was based on a novel of Henry Dupuis-Mazuel "Le miracle des loups", published in 1924.
Philippe Pollet-Villard is a French filmmaker. He won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2007 for his film Le Mozart des pickpockets. For the film, he also won the César Award for Best Short Film. He is a native of Annecy, France.
