Olivier Assayas

Capable of tackling everything from slow-burning period pieces to thrilling neo-noirs to anarchic comedies, Parisian Olivier Assayas was a gifted director and screenwriter whose work became synonymous with the film movement known as the New French Extremity. The son of filmmaker Jacques Rémy, Assayas began his career as a critic for influential magazine Cahiers du Cinema, where he wrote lovingly about the European and Asian directors who would later inform his own pictures. After working on several shorts, he then made the leap from writer to screenwriter on two collaborations with Andre Techine before moving to the director's chair himself for psychological teen drama "Disorder" (1986). Assayas only began to attract attention outside his homeland a decade later with industry satire "Irma Vep" (1996), but then continued to be embraced by arthouse audiences worldwide thanks to the likes of costume drama "Les destinees" (2000), postmodern fable "Demonlover" (2002) and coming-of-age tale "Something In The Air" (2012), while also courting the mainstream with acclaimed miniseries "Carlos" (Canal+, 2010).