Actor-writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz is one of the leading filmmakers to emerge from France in the last ten years. He is perhaps best known as the writer/director of the acclaimed French drama Hate (La Haine), which, in 1995, garnered the French Cesar Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Editing and won Kassovitz the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kassovitz wrote, directed and starred in his first feature film, Café Au Lait (Metisse), wrote and directed La Haine (Hate) and also wrote and directed the provocative Assassin(s), in which he co-starred with Michel Serrault. His most recent film, The Crimson Rivers, starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassell, has grossed fifty million dollars worldwide.

As an actor, Kassovitz has been equally prolific and successful. He won the Best Young Actor Cesar for his performance in director Jacques Audiard’s Regarde les hommes tomber (See How They Fall). He also appeared in Audiard’s Un heros tres discret (A Self-Made Hero).

More recently, he received a Cesar nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of a conflicted priest in Costa-Gravas’ Holocaust drama Amen.