Mathieu Kassovitz

Mathieu Kassovitz is the son of Peter Kassovitz, a film producer, director, and writer, and Chantal Rémy, a film editor. His mother is a French Catholic, while his father is a Hungarian Jew who fled during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Mathieu has described himself as "not Jewish but I was brought up in a world of Jewish humor".

As a filmmaker, Kassovitz has made several artistic and commercial successes. He wrote and directed La Haine (Hate, 1995), a film dealing with themes around class, race, violence, and police brutality. The film won the César Award for Best Film and netted Kassovitz the Best Director prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. He later directed The Crimson Rivers (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another massive commercial success in France. His Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller, was considered by some to be a commercial failure, although it grossed over three times its roughly $40 million budget. It starred Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., and Penélope Cruz. Kassovitz used the money he made from Gothika to develop a far more personal project: Babylon Babies, an adaptation of one of Maurice G. Dantec's books. It eventually was released as Babylon A.D.. Kassovitz had established the film production firm MNP Entreprise in 2000 "to develop and produce feature films by Kassovitz and to represent him as a director and actor." MNP Entreprise is responsible for the co-productions of a number of films including Avida (2006), in which Kassovitz acted, and Babylon A.D. which he directed. Kassovitz purchased the film rights for the novel Johnny chien méchant by Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala. The film adaptation, titled Johnny Mad Dog and written and directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It was screened within the Un Certain Regard section. In 2011, he starred in and directed Rebellion, a war film based on a true story of French commandos who clashed with tribes in New Caledonia, the Melanesian territory of France. His future project, science fiction film MNP, is named after Mir Space Station, whose writing in Cyrillic letters (Мир) look like the letters MNP, and also his production company.

Kassovitz is most famous outside France for his acting role as Nino Quincampoix in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie. He also had small roles in La Haine (which he directed), Birthday Girl, and The Fifth Element. He played leading roles in A Self-Made Hero (1996) by Jacques Audiard and in Amen. (2003) by Costa-Gavras. Kassovitz is recognized for playing a conflicted Belgian explosives expert in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich, alongside Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, and Geoffrey Rush. Kassovitz was a jury member for the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Since 2015, Kassovitz has been starring in the acclaimed espionage thriller series The Bureau, broadcast in France on Canal+ and made available around the world on Amazon Prime Video. So far five seasons have been screened.

Kassovitz was married to French actress Julie Mauduech. He directed her in his 1993 film Métisse (Café au lait, English title), in which he also acted. She had a small role in his film La Haine (during the scene in the Parisian art gallery). In 2009, Kassovitz won the Rallye Monte Carlo des Véhicules à Énergie Alternative (starting event of the FIA Alternative Energies Cup) in the category reserved to electric vehicles, driving a Tesla Roadster. Kassovitz is known for his outspokenness, and frequently has made controversial comments on socio-political issues. Kassovitz was a strong critic of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he described in his blog as having "ideas that not only reveal his inexperience of politics and human relations, but which also illuminate the purely demagogical and egocentric aspects of a puny, would-be Napoleon." In a 2012 interview, he described the outgoing Sarkozy administration as "horrible". On 3 September 2023, while engaged in a training course at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry, Kassovitz was involved in a "serious" motorcycle accident that caused head trauma and a fractured pelvis.

Acting roles

Producer La Chepor (2004)

Acting roles