20 Facts About Thierry Michel

Thierry Michel was born on 13 October 1952 and is a Belgian film director, mostly making social and political documentaries.

Thierry Michel was born in Charleroi in Belgium on 13 October 1952 in an industrial region called "The Black Country".

Thierry Michel became one of the leaders of an emerging Walloon cinema movement.

Thierry Michel was among the signatories of the Manifesto for Walloon culture in 1983.

Thierry Michel again combined fiction and fact with his 1985 Hotel Particulier about the prison system.

In 1993 Thierry Michel made a film about a scandal that had deeply shaken Belgium: La Grace Perdue d'Alain Van Der Biest.

Thierry Michel became interested in ethnographic work in developing countries, particularly Africa.

Thierry Michel directed his second feature film Issue de Secours in 1987, a poetic and mystical work set in the Moroccan desert.

Thierry Michel depicted the street urchins and slums of Brazil in the documentaries Gosses de Rio and A Fleur de Terre, both released in 1990.

Thierry Michel's award-winning Zaire, le cycle du serpent portrays the famous and the outcasts of Zairian society.

Thierry Michel investigated charity operations in the dangerous conditions of Somalia with his 1994 Somalie, l'Humanitaire s'en va-t-en guerre.

Thierry Michel returned to Zaire in 1995 to make a film about the legacy of colonialism and the white presence in the country 35 years after independence.

Thierry Michel was arrested, jailed and deported a few days after arriving and his equipment was seized.

Thierry Michel returned to Africa in 1996 to make Donka, radioscopie d'un hopital africain, which depicts the bleak conditions in Donka Hospital in Conakry, Guinea.

In 1998 after the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko Thierry Michel made the historical journalism film Mobutu roi du Zaire, a Franco-Belgian co-production.

Thierry Michel watched over 950 hours of archived films to make the documentary, selecting extracts and interleaving them with interviews of many witnesses, both opponents and supporters of Mobutu.

Thierry Michel returned once more to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004, making a film that explores the majestic Congo River and the life it creates in Congo River, Beyond Darkness.

Thierry Michel made the TV documentary Katanga, la guerre du cuivre in 2009, the basis for the film Katanga Business.

Thierry Michel made the documentary L'affaire Chebeya covering the trial and events leading up to it.

Thierry Michel has drawn criticism for lack of analysis in his documentaries.