Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe

Though he began his career in working on feature films, French writer-director Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe quickly found that his ideal medium was, in fact, television. Following his directorial debut, the 1971 big screen fantasy drama "The Water Spider," Verhaeghe all but disappeared from action for a decade before resurfacing in the early 1980s. Thereafter, though, it only took him a short period of time to solidify himself as a very gifted and capable writer and director of literary adaptations, bringing the work of Franz Kafka, Luigi Pirandello and Gustave Flaubert to the small screen. His 1992 collaboration with lauded screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, "La Controverse de Valladolid," starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, is considered by many his career apex, though his subsequent successes, including his 1994 adaptation of Flaubert's "Eugénie Grandet," his 1997 take on Stendahl's "The Red and the Black," starring Carole Bouquet, and his and Carriere's 2000 version of Racine's "Bérénice," starring Bouquet and Gérard Depardieu, are also held in extremely high regard. A prolific director with over 40 directing credits over the past two decades, Verhaeghe has enjoyed recent success with the acclaimed 2008 TV movie "L'Abolition," starring Depardieu and Charles Berling, while a rare return to cinematic fare, the World War I coming-of-age drama "Le Grand Meaulnes," also received warm notices in 2006.