Olivier Assayas

Olivier Assayas
Assayas in 2010
Born	(1955-01-25) 25 January 1955 (age 69) Paris, France
Occupation(s)	Film director, screenwriter, film critic
Years active	1977–present
Spouse	Maggie Cheung ​ ​ (m. 1998; div. 2001)​
Partner	Mia Hansen-Løve (2002–2017)
Children	1

Olivier Assayas (French: [ɔlivje asajas]; born 25 January 1955) is a French film director, screenwriter and film critic. Assayas is known for his eclectic filmography, consisting of slow-burning period pieces, psychological thrillers, neo-noirs, and comedies. He has directed French, Spanish, and English-language films with international casts. The son of filmmaker Jacques Rémy, Assayas began his career as a critic for Cahiers du Cinéma. There he wrote about world cinema and its film auteurs, who later influenced his work. Assayas made several short films, and made his feature debut with Disorder in 1986.

He continued directing feature films, with Cold Water (1994) considered a breakthrough film in his career. It was his first film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. His followup film, Irma Vep (1996), also screened at Cannes, while Sentimental Destinies (2000), Demonlover (2002), and Clean (2004) all officially competed for the Palme d'Or. In 2006, he contributed a short film to the anthology film Paris, je t'aime (2006).

Assayas gained acclaim for his dramas Summer Hours (2008), Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), and Personal Shopper (2016); the latter won him the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director. He also directed the comedy Non-Fiction (2018) and the spy thriller Wasp Network (2019).

Life and career

Assayas was born in Paris, France, the son of French director/screenwriter Raymond Assayas, alias Jacques Rémy, and Catherine de Károlyi, a fashion designer. His father was of Turkish-Jewish origin and had settled in Italy before France. His mother was Protestant and of Hungarian origin.^[1][2][3][4]

Assayas started his career in the industry by helping his father. He ghostwrote episodes for TV shows his father was working on when his health failed. In a 2010 interview, Assayas said his main political influences when growing up were Guy Debord and George Orwell.^[5] Of the 1968 May uprising to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, Assayas said: "I was defined by the politics of May '68, but for me May '68 was an anti-totalitarian uprising. People seemed to forget that at the occupied Odéon theater, you had crossed flags-black and red, and I was on the side of the black element."^[5]

Assayas's biggest hit to date is Irma Vep, starring Maggie Cheung. It is a tribute to both French director Louis Feuillade and Hong Kong cinema.

While working at Cahiers du cinéma, Assayas wrote lovingly about both European and Asian film directors he admired. He has made a documentary, HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien, about Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Assayas married Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001, but their relationship remained amicable. In 2004, she starred in his film Clean.

He met actress-director Mia Hansen-Løve when Hansen-Løve, 17 at the time, starred in Assayas's 1998 feature Late August, Early September. He has said they "didn't get together until [she] was 20".^[6] They separated in 2017.

In 2009 and 2010, Assayas signed two petitions in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained in Switzerland while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges in the United States and had long been in exile from the U.S. The first petition argued that the detention would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely". It said that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects".^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

Assayas directed and co-wrote the 2010 French television miniseries Carlos, about the life of the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez won the César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2011 for his performance as Carlos.

In April 2011, it was announced that Assayas would be a member of the jury for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.^[12]

Assayas's 2012 film Something in the Air was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.^[13] Assayas won the Osella for Best Screenplay at Venice.^[14] His 2014 film Clouds of Sils Maria was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.^[15]

Sils Maria won the Louis Delluc Prize and garnered six César Award nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Kristen Stewart won a César Award for Best Supporting Actress.^[16][17]

In 2016, Assayas won Best Director Award (Cannes Film Festival) for Personal Shopper, which also starred Stewart.^[18]

In June 2017, it was announced that Assayas would preside over the 2017 Locarno Film Festival.^[19]

Style and influences

In an interview with Nick Pinkerton of Reverse Shot, Assayas talked about his influences:

That radicality in cinema involved just being outside of the world of modern images, and the key to it was the work of Robert Bresson, who has been by far the most important influence in my work, and intellectually it's been the influence of Guy Debord—basically, you know, it's been Debord–Bresson, Bresson–Debord, the things that've always defined my framework, the way I look at the world.^[20]

In the 2012 Sight & Sound directors' poll, Assayas listed his ten favorite films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Ludwig, A Man Escaped, Mirror, Napoléon, Playtime, The Rules of the Game, The Tree of Life, and Van Gogh.^[21]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Director	Screenwriter	Distribution
1986	Disorder	Yes	Yes	Forum Distribution
1989	Winter's Child	Yes	Yes	Ciné Classic
1991	Paris Awakens	Yes	Yes	Pan-Européenne
1993	A New Life	Yes	Yes	Pyramide Distribution
1994	Cold Water	Yes	Yes	Pan-Européenne
1996	Irma Vep	Yes	Yes	Haut et Court
1998	Late August, Early September	Yes	Yes	PolyGram Film Distribution
2000	Sentimental Destinies	Yes	Yes	Pathé Distribution
2002	Demonlover	Yes	Yes	SND Films
2004	Clean	Yes	Yes	ARP Sélection
2006	Paris, je t'aime	Yes	Yes	Segment: "Quartier des Enfants Rouges" La Fabrique de Films
2007	Boarding Gate	Yes	Yes	ARP Sélection
2008	Summer Hours	Yes	Yes	MK2 Films
2012	Something in the Air	Yes	Yes
2014	Clouds of Sils Maria	Yes	Yes	Les Films du Losange
2016	Personal Shopper	Yes	Yes
2018	Non-Fiction	Yes	Yes	Ad Vitam Distribution
2019	Wasp Network	Yes	Yes	Netflix
2024	Suspended Time	Yes	Yes

As a writer only

• Passage secret (1985)
• Rendez-vous (1985)
• L'Unique (1986)
• Scene of the Crime (1986)
• Avril brisé (1987)
• Filha da Mãe (1990)
• Alice and Martin (1998)
• Based on a True Story (2017) - Co-written with Roman Polanski

Television

Year	Title	Director	Screenwriter	Notes
1982	Étoiles et toiles		Yes	Documentary
1994	Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge...	Yes	Yes	TV series
1997	Cinéma, de notre temps	Yes	Yes	Episode: HHH - Un portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien
2006	Noise	Yes		Documentary
2007	To Each His Own Cinema	Yes	Yes	Segment: "Recrudescence"
2007	Stockhausen / Preljocaj Dialogue	Yes		Documentary
2008	Eldorado	Yes		Documentary
2010	Carlos	Yes	Yes	TV miniseries
2022	Irma Vep	Yes	Yes	TV miniseries

Short films

Year	Title	Director	Screenwriter	Notes
1978	Nuit féline		Yes	Short film
1979	Copyright	Yes		Short film
1980	Rectangle - Deux chansons de Jacno	Yes		Short film
1980	Scopitone	Yes	Yes	Short film
1982	Laissé inachevé à Tokyo	Yes	Yes	Short film
1984	Winston Tong en studio	Yes		Short documentary
1998	Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung	Yes		Short documentary

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Project	Result
1991	Prix Jean Vigo		Paris Awakens	Won
2000	Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or	Sentimental Destinies	Nominated
2002			Demonlover	Nominated
2004			Clean	Nominated
2008	Boston Society of Film Critics	Best Foreign Language Film	Summer Hours	Won
	Los Angeles Film Critics Association	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
	National Society of Film Critics Award	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
	New York Film Critics Circle Award	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
	Toronto Film Critics Association	Best Foreign Language Film		Won
2010	Primetime Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series	Carlos	Nominated
	César Award	Best Director		Nominated
	European Film Award	Best Director		Nominated
	Lumières Award	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Director		Nominated
	Los Angeles Film Critics Association	Best Director		Won
	Globes de Cristal Award	Best Television Film or Television Series		Won
2012	Venice International Film Festival	Golden Osella for Best Original Screenplay	Something in the Air	Won
		Fondazione Mimmo Rotella Award		Won
		Golden Lion		Nominated
2014	Louis Delluc Prize		Clouds of Sils Maria	Won
	Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or		Nominated
	César Award	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Director		Nominated
		Best Original Screenplay		Nominated
2016	Cannes Film Festival	Best Director	Personal Shopper	Won
2016	Zurich Film Festival	A Tribute To... Award	Lifetime Achievement	Won

References

1. "Olivier Assayas Interview". Outside In Tokyo.
2. Chouaki, Yasmine (1 June 2012). "2. Michka Assayas (rediffusion)". RFI. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
3. "Michka Assayas Ecrivain et journaliste français". Evene. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
4. "Olivier Assayas • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema". www.sensesofcinema.com. 27 August 2007.
5. White, Rob (Winter 2010). "Interview with Olivier Assayas". Film Quarterly. 64 (2): 75-77. doi:10.1525/FQ.2010.64.2.74.
6. Morris, Octavia (27 June 2010). "The film that changed my life: Mia Hansen-Løve". guardian.co.uk. London. Retrieved 25 September 2010.
7. "Le cinéma soutient Roman Polanski / Petition for Roman Polanski - SACD". archive.ph. 4 June 2012. Archived from the original on 4 June 2012. Retrieved 20 April 2022.
8. Shoard, Catherine; Agencies (29 September 2009). "Release Polanski, demands petition by film industry luminaries". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 June 2019. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
9. "Pétition des nominés à Cannes en faveur de Roman Polanski". La Règle du jeu (in French). 11 May 2010. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
10. Lévy, Bernard-Henri (11 May 2010). "Polanski Petition: A Gesture of Solidarity and an Appeal to Swiss Justice". HuffPost. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
11. "French directors sign Polanski petition at Cannes". Daily Express. 12 May 2010. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
12. "The Jury of the 64th Festival de Cannes". Cannes. 20 April 2011. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
13. "Venezia 69". labiennale. Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
14. "Official Awards of the 69th Venice Film Festival". labiennale. Archived from the original on 12 September 2012. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
15. "2014 Official Selection". Cannes. Retrieved 17 April 2014.
16. Keslassy, Elsa (16 December 2014). "Olivier Assayas' 'Sils Maria' Wins Louis Delluc Prize".
17. César Award for Best Supporting Actress
18. Tartaglione, Nancy (22 May 2016). "Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake' Takes Palme D'Or; Director Joins Double-Winners Club – Cannes".
19. "Olivier Assayas to Preside Over Locarn Film Festival". 29 June 2017. Retrieved 29 June 2017.
20. Pinkerton, Nick. "Another interview with Olivier Assayas". Reverse Shot.
21. "Olivier Assayas". BFI. Archived from the original on 23 February 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2022.

Further reading

• Olivier Assayas, A Post-May Adolescence. Letter to Alice Debord, FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 17, Vienna: SYNEMA - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2012, ISBN 978-3-901644-44-3
• Kent Jones (Ed.), Olivier Assayas, FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 16, Vienna: SYNEMA - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2012, ISBN 978-3-901644-43-6

External links

• Olivier Assayas at IMDb 
• Olivier Assayas at AlloCiné (in French)
• New York Times article on Assayas
• Bringing Down the House: A Conversation with Olivier Assayas, The Notebook, mubi.com