Konstantinos Gavras, better known as Costa-Gavras, is a Greek filmmaker born in 1933. He leaves Greece at 22 to study in Paris, where he first enrolls at the Sorbonne to study Literature and is later admitted to the IDHEC - Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques. After graduating, he becomes assistant director for French auteurs such as René Clair, René Clément, Henri Verneuil, Jacques Demy, Marcel Ophüls, Jean Giono and Jean Becker.
His first feature film, Compartiment tueurs, came out in 1965, and his subsequent films were hugely successful: Z, a film denouncing abuses within the Greek military dictatorship, won two Academy Awards Oscars in 1969 and two awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Through his political films, Costa-Gavras has tackled burning topics of our time.
Working between France and the USA, Costa-Gavras has directed about two dozen films, including Clair de femme (1979), Missing (Palme d'Or, and best actor award for Jack Lemmon in 1982 at Cannes), Section spéciale (which received the award for best director in Cannes in 1975) or Music Box (Golden Bear winner in Berlin in 1989). Currently, and since 2007, Costa-Gavras is the president of the Cinémathèque française.