Costa-Gavras

Greek-French filmmaker, born in Athens on February 12, 1933 and the son of a Greek Government official, he studied Law and graduated in Letters from the Sorbonne University in Paris. After studying Film at the IDHEC in Paris, he worked as an assistant to Yves Allegret, René Clair, Jacques Demy, René Clément and Henri Verneuil. He was named president of the Cinémathèque Française.

He made his debut as a director in 1965 with The Rails of Crime , a crime classic that still showed little originality, but in which he manages to bring together what would be his usual collaborators: the actor and singer Yves Montand and the actress Simone Signoret.

Two years later, Costa-Gavras touched on the theme of the French Resistance with Sobra un hombre , giving birth to his first political thriller, the mythical Z (1969). Film based on the best-seller by Vassili Vassilikos, it recounts the conflict caused by the assassination of a pacifist leader. With this important denunciation of the military dictatorship “of the Greek colonels” -he won the Hollywood Oscar for the best foreign film- he would continue his close union with the aforementioned Yves Montand. And together they began a kind of ideological “crusade”, in which the Marxist writers Jorge Semprún and Franco Salinas would also collaborate, making films as significant as La confesión, about the famous trials in Prague, according to the autobiographical story of Artur London; State of siege , about the mission of a CIA agent in Uruguay; Special Section , a judicial chronicle of Nazi-occupied France, now without Montand; Disappeared (Hollywood Oscar for Best Screenplay), about the disappearance of an American journalist in Chile after General Pinochet’s coup; and his masterpiece From him The music box (1989), which tells the life of a former Hungarian Nazi refugee in the United States.

Costa-Gavras’ film-narrative style is of notable formal brilliance, not without suspense and a certain tone of police investigation. In addition to the ideological forcefulness of his cinema of clear “commitment” to the left, it shows a simplistic Manichaeism, which reduces the rigor of the story and affects demagogy (the aforementioned Disappeared , or Amen, for example), but without ceasing to have a certain background of truth. Accused of superficiality and of drowning the political content in the spectacular or of seeking commercial success, the award-winning work of this filmmaker moves the viewer to reflection, although more emotionally than intellectually: “I am convinced that every film It should be readable by the majority of the public. For this reason, the action parts and the lyrical parts must be emphasized,” said Costa-Gavras.

This controversial filmmaker is an idealist and defender of social justice, and a tireless fighter for public liberties, and has manifested his condition as a Eurocommunist with a phrase reminiscent of Antonio Gramsci: “It is difficult not to be committed. Even those who pretend not to be ‘engagés’ are in some way, because they let go”.

His most recent “militant” films – La petite apocalypse , a satire on the former intellectuals of May ’68, inspired by the homonymous book by the Polish Tadeusz Konwicki; Mad City , a complaint about the manipulation of TV, shot in Hollywood with Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta as protagonists; Arcadia , a drama about workplace conflicts, based on the novel by Donald Westlaker; or Amen , based on the controversial and now unauthorized play by Rolf Hotchhut “El Vicario” – confirm the veteran Costa-Gavras as the pioneer of that political cinema that was all the rage in the seventies, but which is currently somewhat outdated .