Stéphane Brizé

Stéphane Brizé's filmmaking has been honored with prizes at film festivals throughout Europe. In the 2000s, festival audiences in Spain, Italy, Turkey, and other countries took notice of the writer-director's charming, emotionally layered movies. His legion of new fans joined a staunch cadre of devotees in his native France, where Brizé had been penning and directing films since the early 1990s. After crafting his first feature at the tail end of the decade, Brizé broke through to a wider audience in the mid-2000s with "Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé". A portrait of a middle-aged civil servant's affection for a woman who's already spoken for, the film garnered widespread critical praise, and several of the actors Brizé directed were nominated for César Awards (France's equivalent to Oscars). His next movie as a writer-director--the randy romantic comedy "Entre Adultes"--failed to spark the same level of interest. But when Brizé closed out the 2000s with "Mademoiselle Chambon," another love story about a not-so-perfectly-paired couple, he was clearly an artist in the process of fulfilling his earlier promise. The screenplay, co-written by Brizé, won him his first César. Known for his good looks, the filmmaker has also appeared in a handful of French films as an actor since the 1990s, though he never took on a leading role.