French director Claude Lelouch, guest of film festival in Bucharest

French filmmaker Claude Lelouch, known for the Palme d’Or-winning film A Man and a Woman, will be the guest of honor of this year’s Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest.

The festival, which showcases productions awarded at the famed French film festival, will dedicate a retrospective to the French director, and three of his feature films will be screened.

Lelouch discovered his passion for cinema when, as a child, he used to hide in cinema halls during the Second World War. In 1957, while working as a news cameraman, he was sent to Moscow to film undercover shots of daily life in the Soviet Union. While working on that feature, he visited the set where Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying was being filmed and decided to become a director.

After the lack of success of his first film, the 1960 Le propre de l’homme, he received international recognition in Cannes in 1966 with Un homme et une femme/ A Man and a Woman. The film also received an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and one for Best Script, in addition to tens of other international distinctions. The film stars Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh, and Valérie Lagrange.

Since then, Lelouch directed more than 50 films, and several have been selected and showcased at Cannes. Among them are L’aventure, c’est l’aventure(1972), Les uns et les autres (1981), and Roman de gare (2007).

His most recent film, Les plus belles années d’une vie (2019), was shown in Cannes this year, outside of the competition. The film stars again Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant, 53 years after being cast together in A Man and a Woman, but also Marianne Denicourt and Monica Bellucci.

Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest takes place between October 18 and October 27.

(Photo: Georges Biard/ Wikipedia)