Christian Carion
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Christian Carion (born 4 January 1963) is a French
film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...
, dialogue writer and
screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
, gaining international attention for '' Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas)'', which was nominated for several awards, including the 2005
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
.


Life and career

Christian Carion was born into a family of farmers in the north of France. Carion's youth was spent in his parents' farm fields, where he was constantly reminded of World War I as the family often found dangerous, unexploded shells left over from the conflicts in the fields. He had also heard of the stories in which French soldiers would leave their trenches at night to meet with their wives in the surrounding German-occupied towns and return to fight the next morning. After passing his baccalauréat, he joined an engineering school affiliated to the French ministry of agriculture. Later he decided to quit his scientific career and began shooting films he himself describes as "uninteresting". When he met Christophe Rossignon, both men started to collaborate in movie-making - Carion as film-maker and Rossignon as producer. In 1999, Rossignon also acted in Carion's short film ''Monsieur le député''. In 2001, Carion directed his first feature film: '' Une hirondelle a fait le printemps'' (''The Girl from Paris''), the story, an hommage to his upbringing, tells the meeting of a brooding farmer, Michel Serrault, and a parisian girl seeking the calm of the countryside, played by Mathilde Seigner. The film attracted over 2.4 million of French moviegoers. Following this success, Carion started a more ambitious project, '' Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas)''. Screened in Cannes for the film festival in 2005, this historic fiction film depicts the fraternizations of warriors from three different countries on the eve of Christmas during
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. Carion stated that he'd never heard of the actual Christmas truce incidents while growing up in France, as the French Army and authorities suppressed them, having been viewed as an act of disobedience. He was introduced to the story via a historian who showed him photos and documents archived in France, Great Britain, and Germany. The film was a commercial success. It was nominated for numerous awards at the French
César Awards The César Award is the national film award of France. It is delivered in the ' ceremony and was first awarded in 1976. The nominations are selected by the members of twelve categories of filmmaking professionals and supported by the French Min ...
and for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Two years later, he filmed another historic film; '' L'Affaire Farewell'' (''Farewell''), with Emir Kusturica and Guillaume Canet - a spy film set in Russia and based on true events. In 2014 he shot, on the roads of northern France, '' En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait''. This movie is another historical piece about the exodus of millions of people in May 1940, when France was falling apart and the inhabitants of northern France were fleeing the German troops. Written using numerous recollections from the northern people, the film depicts the quest of a German dissident, looking for his son. The original music was composed by
Ennio Morricone Ennio Morricone ( , ; 10 November 19286 July 2020) was an Italian composer, Orchestration, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 film score, scores for cinema and televisi ...
.


Filmography


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Carion, Christian 1963 births Living people People from Cambrai French film directors French male screenwriters French screenwriters German-language film directors