Costa-Gavras is a Greek-French film director, screenwriter, and producer who lives and works in France.
19 Facts About Costa-Gavras
2.
Costa-Gavras is known for political films, such as the political thriller Z, which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Missing, for which he won the Palme d'Or and an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
3.
Costa-Gavras's family spent the Second World War in a village in the Peloponnese, and moved to Athens after the war.
4.
Costa-Gavras's father had been a member of the Pro-Soviet branch of the Greek Resistance, and was imprisoned during the Greek Civil War.
5.
Costa-Gavras was president of the Cinematheque Francaise from 1982 to 1987, and again since 2007.
6.
Costa-Gavras is known for merging controversial political issues with the entertainment value of commercial cinema.
7.
In most cases, the targets of Costa-Gavras's work have been right wing or far right movements and regimes, including the Greek military in Z, and right-wing dictatorships that ruled much of Latin America during the height of the Cold War, as in State of Siege and Missing.
8.
Costa-Gavras has brought attention to international issues, some urgent, others merely problematic, and he has done this in the tradition of cinematic story-telling.
9.
Until 2019's Adults in the Room, Costa-Gavras had never worked in Greece or made a film in the Greek language.
10.
When Costa-Gavras asked about some of his biggest cinematic influences, he replied:.
11.
Costa-Gavras listed Rene Clement, Jacques Demy, and Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers as an influence on his filmmaking.
12.
Costa-Gavras films have been a significant influence on political cinema.
13.
Costa-Gavras has influenced directors such as Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Steven Soderbergh, Rachid Bouchareb, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Ben Affleck.
14.
Costa-Gavras was in the tradition of Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and was the man in that moment.
15.
Costa-Gavras has received an honorary doctorate from the Film School of the Aristotle University in 2013.
16.
Costa-Gavras was interviewed extensively by The Times cultural correspondent Melinda Camber Porter and was featured prominently in her book Through Parisian Eyes: Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture.
17.
Costa-Gavras was the first filmmaker to receive the Catalonia International Prize.
18.
Costa-Gavras is the first cousin of Penelope Spheeris, Jimmie Spheeris and Chris Spheeris.
19.
In 2009, Costa-Gavras signed a petition in support of film director Roman Polanski, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.