Bob Swaim
Bob Swaim (born 1943) is a Chicago-born filmmaker who built his career in France. He went to Paris for doctoral work in ethnology — studying at the Collège de France under Claude Lévi-Strauss — but caught "the film bug" at the Cinémathèque française and enrolled instead at the École Nationale de la Cinématographie. After award-winning shorts in the early 1970s, his first feature was La Nuit de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1977). His breakthrough, the gritty Paris cop thriller La Balance (1981), was called a reinvention of the French police film and won three Césars including Best Picture. The success led him to Hollywood, where he directed Half Moon Street (1986) with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine — adapted from Paul Theroux — and introduced Vincent Lindon on screen. Disenchanted with the studio system, he returned to France to develop European projects for American producers.