Frédéric Auburtin

Renowned for his working relationship with Gérard Depardieu, Frédéric Auburtin first served as assistant to some of the greatest filmmakers in French cinema before taking the director's chair himself on the likes of "The Bridge" (1999), "Special Correspondents" (2009) and "United Passions" (2014). Born in Marseille in 1962, Auburtin studied music and literature at the University of Provence before switching his attention to the film world. Auburtin picked up his first credit as a third assistant director on Robert Guédiguian's decade-spanning tale of Italian immigrants, "Rouge midi" (1985), and he went onto work in a similar capacity for a whole host of distinguished names including Francis Veber on role reversal farce "Les Fugitifs" (1986), Maurice Pialat on the adaptation of Georges Bernanos' novel, "Sous le soleil de Satan" (1987), where he also made a cameo as a young priest, and Luigi Comencini on the big-screen version of tragic Puccini opera "La Bohème" (1988). Auburtin eventually worked his way up to first assistant director with love triangle drama "La fille des collines" (1990) and went onto add romantic epics "The Lover" (1992) and "The Horseman on the Roof" (1995) and French historical pictures "Germinal" (1993) and "Lucie Aubrac" (1997) to his resume before making a rare move into Hollywood territory with the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring action adventure "The Man in the Iron Mask" (1998). A year later, Auburtin became a fully-fledged director in his own right with "The Bridge" (1999), a drama focusing on the collapse of a 15-year marriage, which like many of his future films, starred Gérard Depardieu. After writing and directing a single episode of police procedural "Boulevard du Palais" (France 2, 1999-), Auburtin made his second feature with "Volpone" (TF1, 2004), a TV movie based on Ben Jonson's fable about a swindler pretending to be on his deathbed, and followed it up with a detective comedy based on Frédéric Dard's series of novels, "San-Antonio" (2004). Auburtin then directed the "Quartier Latin" segment of anthology "Paris, je t'aime" (2006) and the post-divorce drama "La vie a une" (TF1, 2008) before garnering critical acclaim for "Special Correspondents," a satire about two radio broadcasters who get into trouble after pretending to be held captive in Iraq. After returning to the small screen to helm two episodes of sitcom "La pire semaine de ma vie" (M6, 2011), Auburtin received an altogether more hostile response for his sixth full-length feature, "United Passions" (2014), a FIFA-funded drama about the history of the governing football body which was not only described as a hagiographic whitewash but also suffered the misfortune of being released in the same week that the organization became engulfed in a major international corruption scandal.