fiction.wikisort.org - Screenwriter

Olivier Assayas (born 25 January 1955) is a French film director, screenwriter and film critic. Assayas is known for his slow-burning period pieces, psychological thrillers, neo-noirs and French comedies. His work has become synonymous with the film movement known as the New French Extremity and has collaborated frequently with Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. The son of filmmaker Jacques Rémy, Assayas began his career as a critic for influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Here he wrote about the World Cinema and its film auteurs who would later influence his own works. Assayas made several shorts, and then made the leap from writer to screenwriter.

Olivier Assayas
Assayas in 2010
Born	(1955-01-25) 25 January 1955 (age 67) Paris, France
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, film critic
Years active	1977–present
Spouse	Maggie Cheung ​ ​ (m. 1998; div. 2001)​
Partner	Mia Hansen-Løve (2002–2017)
Children	1

He made his directorial film debut with Disorder in 1986. He continued directing films, with Cold Water (1994) becoming a breakthrough film in his career. It would be his first film to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. His follow up film Irma Vep (1996) also screened at Cannes, while Sentimental Destinies (2000), Demonlover (2002), and Clean (2004) all officially competed for the Palme d'Or. In 2006, he contributed a short film to the anthology film Paris, je t'aime (2006) with fellow directors such as Alexander Payne, Coen Brothers and Alfonso Cuarón. He gained acclaim with his dramas Summer Hours (2008), Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016); the latter won him the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director. He has also directed the comedy Non-Fiction (2018) and the spy thriller Wasp Network (2019).

Life and career

Assayas was born in Paris, France, the son of French director/screenwriter Raymond Assayas, alias Jacques Rémy (1911–1981). His father was of Turkish-Jewish origin who had settled in Italy, while his mother, Catherine de Károlyi, was a fashion designer of Protestant Hungarian origin.[1][2][3][4] Assayas started his career in the industry by helping his father. He ghostwrote episodes for TV shows his father was working on when his health failed. In a 2010 interview, Assayas stated that his main political influences when growing up were Guy Debord and George Orwell.[5] Speaking of the 1968 May uprising to overthrow General de Gaulle, Assayas in the same interview stated: "I was defined by the politics of May '68, but for me May '68 was an anti-totalitarian uprising. People seemed to forget that at the occupied Odéon theater, you had crossed flags-black and red, and I was on the side of the black element."[6]

He made his debut in 1986, after directing some short films and writing for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

Assayas's film Cold Water was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[7]

His biggest hit to date has been Irma Vep, starring Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, which manages to be a tribute both to French director Louis Feuillade and to Hong Kong cinema.

While working at Cahiers du cinéma, Assayas wrote lovingly about European film directors he admires but also about Asian directors. One of his films, HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien, is a documentary about Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien.

He married Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001, but their relationship remained amicable, and in 2004 Cheung made her film Clean with him.

He met actress-director Mia Hansen-Løve when Hansen-Løve, seventeen at the time, starred in Assayas's 1998 feature Late August, Early September, but "[they] didn't get together until [she] was 20".[8] They separated in 2017.

In 2009 and 2010, Assayas signed two petitions in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the first petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects."[9][10][11][12][13]

He directed and co-wrote the acclaimed 2010 French television miniseries Carlos, about the life of the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez won the César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2011 for his performance as Carlos.

In April 2011, it was announced that he would be a member of the jury for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.[14]

His 2012 film, Something in the Air, was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.[15] Assayas won the Osella for Best Screenplay at Venice.[16] His 2014 film Clouds of Sils Maria was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.[17] Sils Maria won the Louis Delluc Prize and garnered six César Award nominations including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. The film won a César Award for Best Supporting Actress for American actress Kristen Stewart.[18][19] In 2016, Assayas won Best Director Award (Cannes Film Festival) for Personal Shopper, which also starred Kristen Stewart.[20]

In June 2017, it was announced that Assayas would preside over the 2017 70th anniversary Locarno Film Festival.[21]

Style and influences

In an interview with Nick Pinkerton of Reverse Shot, Assayas talked about his influences:

That radicality in cinema involved just being outside of the world of modern images, and the key to it was the work of Robert Bresson, who has been by far the most important influence in my work, and intellectually it's been the influence of Guy Debord—basically, you know, it's been Debord-Bresson, Bresson-Debord, the things that've always defined my framework, the way I look at the world.[22]

Assayas participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound directors' poll, where he listed his ten favorite films as follows: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Ludwig, A Man Escaped, Mirror, Napoléon, Playtime, The Rules of the Game, The Tree of Life, and Van Gogh.[23]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Director	Screenwriter	Distribution
1986	Disorder	Yes	Yes	Forum Distribution
1989	Winter's Child	Yes	Yes	Ciné Classic
1991	Paris Awakens	Yes	Yes	Pan-Européenne
1993	A New Life	Yes	Yes	Pyramide Distribution
1994	Cold Water	Yes	Yes	Pan-Européenne
1996	Irma Vep	Yes	Yes	Haut et Court
1998	Late August, Early September	Yes	Yes	PolyGram Film Distribution
2000	Sentimental Destinies	Yes	Yes	Pathé Distribution
2002	Demonlover	Yes	Yes	SND Films
2004	Clean	Yes	Yes	ARP Sélection
2006	Paris, je t'aime	Yes	Yes	Segment: "Quartier des Enfants Rouges" La Fabrique de Films
2007	Boarding Gate	Yes	Yes	ARP Sélection
2008	Summer Hours	Yes	Yes	MK2 Films
2012	Something in the Air	Yes	Yes
2014	Clouds of Sils Maria	Yes	Yes	Les films du losange
2016	Personal Shopper	Yes	Yes
2018	Non-Fiction	Yes	Yes	Ad Vitam Distribution
2019	Wasp Network	Yes	Yes	Netflix

As a writer only

• Passage secret (1985)
• Rendez-vous (1985)
• L'Unique (1986)
• Scene of the Crime (1986)
• Avril brisé (1987)
• Filha da Mãe (1990)
• Alice and Martin (1998)
• Based on a True Story (2017) - Co-written with Roman Polanski

Television

Year	Title	Director	Screenwriter	Notes
1982	Étoiles et toiles		Yes	Documentary
1994	Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge...	Yes	Yes	TV series
1997	Cinéma, de notre temps	Yes	Yes	Episode: HHH - Un portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien
2006	Noise	Yes		Documentary
2007	To Each His Own Cinema	Yes	Yes	Segment: "Recrudescence"
2007	Stockhausen / Preljocaj Dialogue	Yes		Documentary
2008	Eldorado	Yes		Documentary
2010	Carlos	Yes	Yes	TV miniseries
2022	Irma Vep	Yes	Yes	TV miniseries

Short films

Year	Title	Director	Screenwriter	Notes
1978	Nuit féline		Yes	Short film
1979	Copyright	Yes		Short film
1980	Rectangle - Deux chansons de Jacno	Yes		Short film
1980	Scopitone	Yes	Yes	Short film
1982	Laissé inachevé à Tokyo	Yes	Yes	Short film
1984	Winston Tong en studio	Yes		Short documentary
1998	Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung	Yes		Short documentary

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Project	Result
1991	Prix Jean Vigo		Paris Awakens	Won
2000	Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or	Sentimental Destinies	Nominated
2002			Demonlover	Nominated
2004			Clean	Nominated
2008	Boston Society of Film Critics	Best Foreign Language Film	Summer Hours	Won
	Los Angeles Film Critics Association	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
	National Society of Film Critics Award	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
	New York Film Critics Circle Award	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
	Toronto Film Critics Association	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
2010	Primetime Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series	Carlos	Nominated
	César Award	Best Director		Nominated
	European Film Award	Best Director		Nominated
	Lumières Award	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Director		Nominated
	Los Angeles Film Critics Association	Best Director		Won
	Globes de Cristal Award	Best Television Film or Television Series		Won
2012	Venice International Film Festival	Golden Osella for Best Original Screenplay	Something in the Air	Won
		Fondazione Mimmo Rotella Award		Won
		Golden Lion		Nominated
2014	Louis Delluc Prize		Clouds of Sils Maria	Won
	Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or		Nominated
	César Award	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Director		Nominated
		Best Original Screenplay		Nominated
2016	Cannes Film Festival	Best Director	Personal Shopper	Won

References

Further reading

• Olivier Assayas, A Post-May Adolescence. Letter to Alice Debord, FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 17, Vienna: SYNEMA - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2012, ISBN 978-3-901644-44-3
• Kent Jones (Ed.), Olivier Assayas, FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 16, Vienna: SYNEMA - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2012, ISBN 978-3-901644-43-6

External links

• Olivier Assayas at IMDb 
• Olivier Assayas at AllMovie
• Olivier Assayas at AlloCiné (in French)
• New York Times article on Assayas
• Bringing Down the House: A Conversation with Olivier Assayas, The Notebook, mubi.com

На других языках

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[de] Olivier Assayas

Olivier Assayas (* 25. Januar 1955 in Paris) ist ein französischer Regisseur, Drehbuchautor und langjähriger Redakteur für Cahiers du cinéma.

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- [en] Olivier Assayas

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[ru] Ассаяс, Оливье

Оливье́ Ассая́с (фр. Olivier Assayas; род. 25 января 1955, Париж, Франция) — французский кинорежиссёр, сценарист, кинооператор и кинокритик.

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