Costa Gavras Biography
Costa Gavras, stage name of Konstantinos Gavras, was born in Loutra Iraias in 1933. It was his father, originally from Odessa and a militant in the Resistance during the Second World War, who influenced his vocation as a filmmaker of political thrillers. Because of the ideas of his father, a ministerial official suspected of being a communist and arrested several times, the young Gavras was unable to enroll in university and was denied a visa for the United States. So in 1949 he moved to Paris where he later obtained French citizenship. After obtaining a degree in literature from the Sorbonne, he studied cinema at IDHEC. After some journalistic experiences and an apprenticeship as an assistant director, he made his debut in 1965 with a solid noir, Compartiment tueurs (Sleeping car for murderers), based on a detective novel by S. Japrisot and produced with the support of his friends Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Conceived in the aftermath of the colonels' coup in Greece (April 1967), Z is inspired by the novel by V. Vassilikos on the Lambrakis affair, a university professor and left-wing deputy who died in 1963 after being hit by a car. An investigation was opened into the accident, which was certainly not accidental, but the trial ended in nothing. The film struggled to find financing and was made thanks to the courageous support of the actor Jacques Perrin, who starred in this and the director's previous works. In the screenplay, written with Jorge Semprún, Gavras disguised the facts by changing the names of the characters and setting the story in an imaginary Mediterranean country. After a new, long period of inactivity, it was the Hollywood studios that offered Gavras the opportunity to relaunch his career in 1982, entrusting him with the direction of Missing. Appointed president of the Cinémathèque française in 1982, C.-G. he dedicated himself with passion to reorganizing its activities. During the five years in which he was head of the historic institute, he directed Conseil de famille (1986; Family Council), a small comedy about the internal contradictions of the bourgeoisie. Less happy appeared La petite apocalypse (1993; The little apocalypse), a satire of the errors and weaknesses of the European left, filmed in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Mad city (1997; Mad city ‒ Assault on the news), denunciation of the mystifications of the media universe. With Amen (2002; amen.), inspired by the play Der Stellvertreter by Rolf Hochhuth, he addressed, with his usual civil attitude, the thorny question of the relationship between Pope Pius XII and the Nazi regime regarding the Holocaust.
