Julien Leclercq

One of the new breed of self-made filmmakers coming of age in the early 2000s, Julien Leclercq was born and raised in northern France. As a young man he was fascinated by movies and became determined to make them himself. That determination became focused on producing a short, low-budget science fiction film, for which Leclercq was able to attract top talent like leading man Pierre Richard, a longtime star in France. The resulting effort, "Transit" (2004), made a significant impact on the domestic film industry, which began to take notice of the brash young producer/director. He was given a much larger budget to complete his first feature-length movie, "Chrysalis," which was released in 2007. This nightmarish science fiction movie, co-written as well as directed by Leclercq, was set in the near future and concerned a widowed cop trying to solve a mystery involving plastic surgery and identity shaping. For his next feature, Leclercq shifted genres to deliver "The Assault," a tense thriller based on a true story about a group of terrorists who hijack an Air France plane and the elite police team tasked with stopping them. As with his previous efforts, Leclercq was very hands-on with this film, acting as its producer, director, and one of its writers.