Tony Gatlif
Tony Gatlif is a French film director who also works as a screenwriter, composer, actor, and producer. Tony Gatlif was born 10 September 1948 as Michel (Boualem) Dahmani in Algeria, then officially part of France, to a Berber (Kabyle) father and an Andalusian-Romani mother, Gatlif’s cultural background is fairly complex.
Tony Gatlif

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- Full name
- Michel Boualem Dahmani.
- Born
- 1948. · Algiers.
- Nationality
- France.
- Occupation
- film director, film producer, screenwriter, actor and film score composer.
- Honours
- Knight of the Legion of Honour, César Award for Best Music Written for a Film, Cannes Best Director Award and Un certain regard Award.
- Languages
- French.
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Documentary summary
Tony Gatlif is a French film director who also works as a screenwriter, composer, actor, and producer. Tony Gatlif was born 10 September 1948 as Michel (Boualem) Dahmani in Algeria, then officially part of France, to a Berber (Kabyle) father and an Andalusian-Romani mother, Gatlif’s cultural background is fairly complex.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q127481 · wikipedia · Tony Gatlif
In this article
Personal
Personal
The recorded working language is French. Places of work recorded in the authority are France. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Legion of Honour, César Award for Best Music Written for a Film, Cannes Best Director Award and Un certain regard Award.
Gatlif was born in Algeria of Pied noir ancestry. After his childhood there, Gatlif arrived in France in 1960 following the Algerian War of Independence.
Career
Career
Gatlif struggled for years to break into the film industry, playing in several theatrical productions until directing his first film, La Tête en ruine, in 1975. He followed it with the 1979 La Terre au ventre, a story of the Algerian War of Independence. Since the 1981 film Corre, gitano, Gatlif's work has been focused on the Romani people of Europe, from whom he partially traces his descent. After making Gaspard et Robinson in 1990, Gatlif spent 1992 and 1993 shooting Latcho Drom, which was awarded numerous prizes. This feature-length musical film, often mislabelled as a documentary, deals with gypsy culture throughout the world around the theme of their music and dance. For Vincent Ostria, then journalist at the Cahiers du Cinéma, it was "the most genuine film of the year (1993 editor's note)." A year later, Gatlif brought the world of the author J. M. G. Le Clézio to the screen in Mondo (1994). His 2004 film Exils, won the Best Director Award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. His film Transylvania also premiered at Cannes in May 2006. He was awarded the ‘Itinérances’ prize in 2022 by the Alès Film Festival – Itinérances.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1948
Tony Gatlif born at Algiers.
Screenwriter
Screenwriter
La Rage au poing (1975)
Director and screenwriter
Director and screenwriter
La Tête en ruine (1975) La Terre au ventre (1978) Corre gitano (1981) Canta gitano (1981) Les Princes (1982) Rue du départ (1985) Pleure pas my love (1989) Gaspard et Robinson (1990) Latcho Drom (1993) Mondo (1995) Gadjo dilo (1997) Je suis né d'une cigogne (1998) Vengo (2000) Swing (2001) Exils (2004) Transylvania (2006) Korkoro (2009) Indignados (2012) Geronimo (2014) Djam (2017) Tom Medina (2021) Ange (2025)

Tony Gatlif: Premio Festival de Cine y DDHH 2016 Fotografía: Iñigo Royo
DONOSTIA KULTURA
Primary material
Documents and archives
scholarly publication
- Between diaspora and region: Tony Gatlif and Mehdi Ben Attia, Contemporary French Civilization, 2024
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2024
Institutional database
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q127481: Tony Gatlif
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
reference work
- “Tony Gatlif”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Tony Gatlif.
- 2.McGregor. Romanticizing the Romani: Unruly Representations of the "Internal Other" in the Work of Tony Gatlif. Australian Journal of French Studies. 59. 34–45. 2022. 10.3828/ajfs.2022.04.
- 3.Tony Gatlif en terre d'asile. RFI Musique. September 2, 2004.
- 4.Festival de Cannes: Exils. festival-cannes.com.
- 5.Festival de Cannes: Transylvania. festival-cannes.com.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Between diaspora and region: Tony Gatlif and Mehdi Ben Attia, Contemporary French Civilization, 2024Crossref registry
VerifiedInstitutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q127481: Tony GatlifWikimedia Foundation
Verifiedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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