Laurent Cantet

French director born in Melle (Deux-Sèvres) in 1961.

After studying photography in Marseille, Laurent Cantet was admitted to the IDHEC in 1984. There, he met future filmmakers Robin Campillo and Gilles Marchand, whom he subsequently collaborated with consistently. After graduating, he worked as a director of photography on short films, before shooting two of his own, including Tous à La Manif (Prix Jean Vigo 1995). In 1999, he directed The Sanguinaires, within the framework of the ARTE collection “2000 vu par...”, then Human Resources, which won the César for Best First Film. Time Out and Heading South were to follow, before the consecration of The Class, based on the novel by François Bégaudeau, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2008. He then shot his first film in Canada, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, then Return to Ithaca in Havana and the last one Arthur Rambo in 2021.
Les Sanguinaires (1997) – Human Resources (2000) – Time Out (2001) – Heading south (2005) – The Class (2008) – 7 Days in Havana (segment La Fuente, 2012) – Foxfire (2013) – Return to Ithaca (2014) – The Workshop (2017) – Arthur Rambo (2021)

Their list of films

See special feature
Laurent Cantet
about Cruel Story of Youth
of Nagisa Ōshima
What is beautiful is how revolt is expressed through the body.
See special feature
Laurent Cantet
about Accattone
of Pier Paolo Pasolini
What always bewilders me is how Pasolini is able to conciliate marxism with the quest for spirituality.
See special feature
Laurent Cantet
about The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
of John Cassavetes
Cassavetes manages to immerse us in a sense of reality that makes situationsand characters much more terrifying than when they are stylized by classic cinematography.
See special feature
Laurent Cantet
about The Rules of the Game
of Jean Renoir
Renoir a donné le LA à des générations de cinéastes.