Leos Carax

Leos Carax (b. 1960, Paris) is a French filmmaker whose work has occupied a singular position in French cinema since the early 1980s. Born Alexandre Oscar Dupont, he adopted a pseudonym before his debut.

His early films — Boy Meets Girl (1984), Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood, 1986), and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) — formed a loose trilogy centered on comedian Denis Lavant, whose extreme physicality and presence were central to Carax's visual language. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, one of the most expensive French films of its time, was a commercial catastrophe on release and became a canonical work. Pola X (1999), an adaptation of Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville, received the Prix du jury at Cannes. Holy Motors (2012), a film structured as a series of encounters in a limousine crossing Paris, was shown in the main competition at Cannes and received international critical attention. Annette (2021), a musical rock opera with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, written and scored by the duo Sparks, opened the Cannes Film Festival and received the Palme d'Or for Best Director. Carax also directed the segment "Merde" in the anthology film Tokyo! (2008).

Leos Carax is one of the few contemporary filmmakers whose work engages simultaneously with the history of cinema, the musical form, melodrama, and the possibilities of pure visual experience.