Love Reinvented

Born in Algiers, Merzak Allouache grew up during the Algerian struggle for independence. He studied filmmaking at Paris’s celebrated IDHEC, and quickly moved on to directing feature films, documentaries, and television programs. Omar Gatlato (1976), his first feature film, set in the neighborhood of Bab el-Oued in Algiers, was such a success that it changed the course of Algerian cinema. The popularity of Omar Gatlato with Algerian audiences demonstrated to the Algerian film industry that its public had an appetite for complex films that dealt with the realities of Algerian contemporary society, opening the door to other films of the same ilk. In 1994 Merzak returned to this same neighborhood to film Bab el-Oued City. The film captured the beginnings of the civil war that was then spreading across Algeria. Bab el-Oued City garnered the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1994, as well as the grand prize at the Arab Film Festival in Paris. During a career that has spanned thirty years, Merzak Allouache’s films continue to examine the complex history that ties France to its former North African colonies, giving us characters full of intelligence and dignity, caught between their French and Algerian identities. Merzak’s other films include Adventures of a Hero/Aventures d’un heros (1978), The Man Who Watched Windows/L’Homme qui regardait les fenêtres (1982), and A Love in Paris/Un amour à Paris (1988). In 1989 he made Following October/L’après-octobre, a documentary about the riots that took place in the suburbs of Paris in 1988.— Harvard Film Archive

François Dupeyron (born 1950) is a French film director and screenwriter. He has directed 17 films since 1977. A former IDHEC graduate, François Dupeyron was quickly noticed with a series of short films, particularly La Nuit du Hibou and Lamento, respectively, 1985 César for Best Short Documentary Film and 1988 César for Best Short Fiction Film. After the critically-acclaimed anti-war film Officer’s Ward , screened in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film festival, his adaptation of a novel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Monsieur Ibrahim, led by the stellar Omar Sharif (2004 César for Best Actor), was nominated for a Golden Globe in the category Best Foreign Film. Dupeyron has worked extensively with actor Gérard Depardieu, from his first feature A Strange Place to Meet (1988), to the fantasy thriller The Machine (1991) and the drama The Bridge (1999), co-directed by Depardieu. Dupeyron has also directed Love Reinvented, a TV series dealing with AIDS, and he co-wrote The Favorite Son with Nicole Garcia and Jacques Fieschi. —colcoa.org

Anne Fontaine (born in Luxembourg, 1959) is a filmmaker and screenwriter who used to be an actor. She lives and works in France.

Born Fontaine Sibertin-Blanc, sister of actor Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc, she went as a young child to live in Lisbon, where her father, Antoine Sibertin-Blanc, is a music professor and cathedral organist. In adolescence she moved to Paris and trained in dance with Joseph Russillo while continuing her academic education, including philosophy. Her husband is Philippe Carcassonne, the film producer, and they have an adopted son who was born in Vietnam.

While still dancing, she was picked by Robert Hossein to play Esmeralda in a 1980 theatrical production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame[ and around this time started to use the name Anne Fontaine. She continued with acting and became known for her roles in comedies like Si ma gueule vous plaît… (1981) and P.R.O.F.S.(1985). An opportunity to be assistant director came with a 1986 stage version of Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) at the Renaud-Barrault theatre.

Fontaine’s first project as solo director, Les histoires d’amour finissent mal… en général (Love Affairs Usually End Badly), won the 1993 Prix Jean Vigo (prize). In 1995, she worked with her brother on the comic Augustin. Two years later, she wrote and directed the successful Nettoyage à Sec (Dry Cleaning). This won the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival 1997 and is generally considered a milestone on Fontaine’s way to becoming “an important figure in contemporary French cinema”.

In 1999 the character Augustin (Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc) re-appeared in Fontaine’s film Augustin, Roi Du Kung-Fu (Augustin, King of Kung-Fu). Comment j’ai tué mon père (How I Killed My Father) was released in 2001, and Nathalie… followed in 2003. The 2005 film, Entre Ses Mains (In His Hands) has been widely described as a thriller: an “intimate thriller” according to Fontaine herself. A third Augustin film, Nouvelle chance (also known as Oh La La) was released in 2006. Then came La fille de Monaco (The Girl From Monaco) in 2008 and Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel), her biopic of Coco Chanel, in 2009.

Fontaine’s work is not easily categorized, though the phrase “psychological drama” is often used. She told a UK newspaper, "I try to work on my characters’ blind side, in a kind of Freudian way: to ask, ‘What are the things about themselves that they’re unaware of? —Wikipedia