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Costa-Gavras (short for Kōnstantinos Gavras) was born in Loutra Iraias, Greece, in 1933, but at the age of 22 moved to Paris to study at the IDHEC film school, making his debut as an assistant director for auteurs such as René Clair and Jacques Demy. His own first feature, Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murders, 1965) was a crime thriller that drew critical acclaim. It brought together some of the best-known actors of the period in France, such as Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, as did his second picture Un homme de trop (Shock Troops, 1967), based on the French Resistance novel by Jean-Pierre Chabrol, and starring Michel Piccoli. With Z, inspired by the political novel by Vasilis Vasilikos, Costa-Gavras secured a place in the front rank of world cinema, duly sealed by twin awards at the Cannes Festival in 1969 (Jury Prize and Best Actor for Jean-Louis Trintignant), two Academy Awards the following year (Best Foreign Language Film and Best Editing), and dozens of other prizes. The political stance adopted in Z would be repeated in many of his later films, such as L’aveu (The Confession, 1970), Hanna K. (1983), Betrayed (1988) and Music Box (1989), which brought Costa-Gavras the Golden Bear at the 1990 Berlinale, as well as an Oscar nomination for female lead Jessica Lange. In 1979 the filmmaker turned to a novel by Romain Gary as the basis for Clair de femme (Womanlight), an intimate drama with Romy Schneider and Yves Montand. That was followed up by Costa-Gavras’ first American movie, Missing, in 1982. It won both the Golden Palm and the best actor award (to Jack Lemmon) in Cannes that year and added to that in 1983 with an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Conseil de famille (Family Council, 1986), with Johnny Hallyday and Fanny Ardant, marked the director’s first venture into comedy, while La petite apocalypse (The Little Apocalypse,1993) – one of his most prescient works – satirized the cynical conversion of left-wing intellectuals into members of the ruling class. With the thriller Mad City (1997), starring Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta, Costa-Gavras laid bare the manipulations of the media. He next made one of his most controversial films, Amen. (2002), and later Le couperet (The Ax, 2005). In 2009, he embarked on a latter-day odyssey in Eden à l'Ouest (Eden Is West, 2009), with Riccardo Scamarcio as a migrant fleeing his own country. Costa-Gavras’ most recent film is Adults in the Room (2019), on the financial crisis that hit Greece in 2015. The director has also appeared in front of the camera in three films by John Landis: Spies Like Us (1985), The Stupids (1996) and Burke and Hare (2010). In 2007 Costa-Gavras was re-elected president of the Cinémathèque Française, a position he still holds today.
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