Arnaud Desplechin
Arnaud Desplechin (born 1960) is a French filmmaker whose dense, literary, and emotionally tangled family dramas have made him one of the most distinctive directors of his generation. Born in Roubaix into a family of writers — his sister Marie is a novelist, his other sister Raphaëlle a screenwriter — he studied at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and graduated from IDHEC in 1984. He has built a recurring company of actors around Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, and Catherine Deneuve. His major works include Esther Kahn (2000), Kings and Queen (2004), the ensemble family drama A Christmas Tale (2008), and My Golden Days (2015), for which he won the César Award for Best Director. He has competed in the main competition at Cannes more than once.