Luc Besson

After start­ing out as an assis­tant direc­tor, Luc Besson direct­ed his fea­ture debut Le dernier com­bat in 1983. Two years lat­er, he made Sub­way, star­ring Isabelle Adjani, Christophe Lam­bert, Jean-Pierre Bacri and Jean-Hugues Anglade. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for 13 César Awards, and won 3, includ­ing Best Actor for Christophe Lam­bert. The direc­tor imposed his visu­al sig­na­ture and then direct­ed The Big Blue, La Femme Niki­ta and Léon: The Pro­fes­sion­al, which defin­i­tive­ly estab­lished his pop­u­lar­i­ty in France and abroad. In 1997, he direct­ed The Fifth Ele­ment, an ambi­tious sci-fi film star­ring Bruce Willis and a com­mer­cial suc­cess every­where, for which he won the César Award for Best Direc­tor. The fol­low­ing year, he direct­ed The Mes­sen­ger: The Sto­ry of Joan of Arc and was again nom­i­nat­ed for the César Award for Best Direc­tor. In 2000, Luc Besson cre­at­ed the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Europa­Corp and returned to direct­ing in 2005 with Angel‑A, fol­lowed a year lat­er by his first ani­mat­ed film, Arthur and the Invis­i­bles, adapt­ed from the epony­mous nov­el he wrote. The film got two sequels: Arthur and the Revenge of Mal­tazard (2009) and Arthur 3: the War of the Two Worlds (2010). In 2010, he adapt­ed for the screen the adven­tures of com­ic char­ac­ter Adèle Blanc-Sec, then direct­ed The Lady (2011), a filmed biog­ra­phy of Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with Michelle Yeoh in the title-role. In 2013, he shot with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeif­fer the black com­e­dy The Fam­i­ly, then hired Scar­lett Johans­son to play the main char­ac­ter in Lucy (2014) and made the sci-fi odyssey Valer­ian and the City of a Thou­sand Plan­ets (2017). Four years after Anna, Luc Besson returns to the big screen this year with Dog­man.