- Mathieu Kassovitz
-
Mathieu Kassovitz 
Kassovitz at the 2008 Cannes Film FestivalBorn 3 August 1967
Paris, FranceOccupation Actor, director, screenwriter, producer Years active 1978–present Website http://www.mathieukassovitz.com/ Mathieu Kassovitz (born 3 August 1967) is a French director, screenwriter, producer and actor, best known for his Cannes-winning drama La Haine. Kassovitz is also the founder of MNP Entreprise, a film production company. Kassovitz was born in Paris, the son of Chantal Rémy, a film editor, and Peter Kassovitz, a director and writer.[1] Kassovitz's mother is French and Catholic and his father is a Hungarian Jew who left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[2] Kassovitz was married to French ex-actress Julie Mauduech, whom he directed and acted alongside with in his 1993 film La Haine (during the scene in the Parisian art gallery). They have a daughter, Carmen. Mauduech is now a costume designer for films.
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Filmmaker
As a filmmaker, Kassovitz has made several artistic and commercial successes. He wrote and directed La Haine (Hate, 1995), a hugely controversial film in France dealing with themes around class, race, violence, and police brutality. The film won the César Award for Best Film and netted Kassovitz the Best Director prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.[3] When he was compared to Spike Lee because the film was being compared to Lee's Do the Right Thing, he noted the irony:
I don't know if it's really important, or intelligent even, when people say to me I'm a white Spike Lee, because they said to Spike Lee you're a black Woody Allen.[4]
He later directed Les Rivières Pourpres (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another massive commercial success in France, and Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller (considered by some to be a commercial failure, although it grossed over twice its roughly $40 million budget), with Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz that he did to earn the money he needed to develop a far more personal project Babylon Babies, the adaptation of one of Maurice Dantec's books. Kassovitz established the film production firm MNP Entreprise in 2000 "to develop and produce feature films by Kassovitz and to represent him as a director and actor."[5] MNP Entreprise is responsible for the co-productions of a number of films including Avida (2006) in which Kassovitz acts and Babylon A.D. which he directed. Kassovitz purchased the film rights for the novel Johnny Mad Dog by Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala. The film was also co-produced by MNP Entreprise, and directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. The premiere of the film was made at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened within the Un Certain Regard section.[6]
MNP Entreprise's upcoming titles are Rebellion, MNP and also Dust Motion, that he will co-direct with young director K-Michel Parandi. Kassovitz will both star in and direct Rebellion, a war film based on a true story of French commandos who clashed with tribes in New Caledonia, the Melanesian territory of France. The film will start shooting at the end of 2008. The science fiction film MNP is named after Mir Space Station, whose writing in Cyrillic letters (Мир) look like the letters MNP, and also the production company.[7]
Actor
Kassovitz is most famous outside France for his role as Nino Quincampoix in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie. Among many other credits, he also had small roles in La Haine (which he also directed), Birthday Girl, Café Au Lait and The Fifth Element. He also played one of the main roles in Amen. (2003) by Costa-Gavras. Kassovitz is also recognizable for playing a conflicted Belgian explosives expert in Steven Spielberg's controversial 2005 film Munich, alongside Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush. He explained several times he accepted acting parts only for the experience of knowing what it is to act, to be able to be a better director of actors afterward, to meet directors he admires and learn from them by working with them, and to take part in great projects.[citation needed] Kassovitz was a jury member for the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
Views on Sarkozy
In November 2005, riots spread throughout poor immigrant suburbs of Paris following the deaths of two teenagers of North African descent, who were accidentally electrocuted while avoiding police ID checks and questioning that amounted to racial profiling. The question of whether young men were victims of racial discrimination set off a chain reaction of violence in schools, gyms, and police stations, and an aggressive response from then - Home Office Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy stirred controversy and outrage when he said the rioters were "scum" and should be "cleansed" from the banlieues (neighborhoods) with a "fire hose".
Kassovitz, whose film La haine ten years earlier had first highlighted the tensions between police and immigrant communities, and stirred constructive national dialogue, publicly responded to Sarkozy via his blog. He took the right-wing minister to task, saying that Sarkozy held "ideas that not only reveal his inexperience of politics and human relations, but which also illuminate the purely demagogical and egocentric aspects of a puny, would-be Napoleon."[8]
Filmography
As director
Feature films
- Métisse / Café au lait (1993)
- La Haine / Hate (1995)
- Assassin(s) (1997)
- Les rivières pourpres / The Crimson Rivers (2000)
- Gothika (2003)
- Babylon A.D. (2008)
- Rebellion (2009), French title: L'Ordre et la Morale - filming in the islands of ‘Ana‘a and Tahiti since the end of August 2010. Release date (in France): 16 November 2011
- Dust Motion (2011) announced
Short films
- Fierrot le pou (1990)
- Cauchemar Blanc (1991)
- Assassins (1992)
- La forêt (1997) (Handicap International)
- Article premier (1998) (Amnesty International)
As an actor
- Au bout du bout du banc (1979) - Mathias Oppenheim
- Next Year If All Goes Well (1981) - Le petit garçon
- Fierrot le pou (1990)
- Touch and Die (1991) - Piaz
- Assassins... (1992)
- French Summer (1992) - Un auto-stoppeur
- Café au lait (1993) - Felix
- Putain de porte (1994)
- Elle voulait faire quelque chose (1994)
- See How They Fall (1994) - Johnny
- Les Fleurs de Maria Papadopylou (1995)
- The City of Lost Children (1995) (uncredited) - Man on the street
- La Haine (Hate) (1995) - Young Skinhead
- My Man (1996) (uncredited) - 1st Client: Clement
- A Self Made Hero (1996) - Albert Dehousse
- News from the Good Lord (1996)
- Assassin(s) (1997) - Max
- The Fifth Element (1997) - Mugger
- Pleasure (And Its Little Inconveniences) (1998) - Roland
- Jakob the Liar (1999) - Herschel
- Amélie (2001) - Nino Quincampoix
- Birthday Girl (2001) - Yuri
- Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) - Physionomiste banquet
- Amen. (2002) - Riccardo Fontana
- Munich (2005) - Robert
- Avida (2006) - Le producteur chanceux
Awards and nominations
- 1994: Nominated for a César Award for Best Newcomer and Best Debut Film
- 1995: Won Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for La Haine.[3]
- 1995: Won a César Award for Best Newcomer
- 2001: Nominated for Best Director for Les Rivières pourpres
- 2001: Won Gold Star for Best Director for Les Rivières pourpres
- 2003: Nominated for a César Award for Best Actor for Amen.
Sport
In 2009, he won with Tesla Roadster the Rallye Monte Carlo des Véhicules à Énergie Alternative (starting event of the FIA Alternative Energies Cup) in the category reserved to electric vehicles.[9][10]
References
- ^ Mathieu Kassovitz Biography (1967-)
- ^ Riding, Alan (1994-08-14). "A French Director Straight Out of (Enfin) Spike Lee". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E5DC1630F937A2575BC0A962958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/K/Kassovitz,%20Mathieu. Retrieved 2007-11-26.
- ^ a b "Festival de Cannes: La Haine". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/3379/year/1995.html. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
- ^ Mathieu Kassovitz - Biography
- ^ MNP Entreprise - uniFrance
- ^ Festival de Cannes : Film details 2008
- ^ Leffler, Rebecca (2008-05-21). "Kassovitz leading 'Rebellion', big-budget 'MNP'". The Hollywood Reporter, the Daily from Cannes (Cannes) (8): p.22. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3if545c66bc7e5705408ffad4779fc5b12.
- ^ http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/476-la-haine-kassovitz-vs-sarkozy
- ^ Classement final officiel 2009, in ACM.mc.
- ^ (French) Nouveau record du monde: un véhicule électrique parcourt 390 kilomètres, World Sports Events.
External links
Films directed by Mathieu Kassovitz Feature films Métisse / Café au lait (1993) · La Haine / Hate (1995) · Assassin(s) (1997) · Les rivières pourpres / The Crimson Rivers (2000) · Gothika (2003) · Babylon A.D.(2008) ·
Short films Fierrot le pou (1990) · Cauchemar Blanc (1991) · Assassins (1992) · La forêt (1997) · Article premier (1998)Categories:- 9/11 conspiracy theorists
- 1967 births
- Actors from Paris
- French actors
- French film directors
- French-language film directors
- French people of Hungarian descent
- FIA Alternative Energies Cup drivers
- Living people
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