Screenwriter, director, writer and essayist Pascal Bonitzer (Paris, 1946) began his career as a cinema critic for the Cahiers du Cinéma. In the 1970’s his attention turned to screenwriting, a trade which led to collaborations with Jacques Rivette, André Téchiné and Raoul Ruiz.
In 1986 he becomes head of the department of Screenwriting at La Fémis, the famous French cinema school. He was also a professor of cinema at Université Paris III (Censier). In 1996, Bonitzer makes his debut as a director with Encore, which receives the Jean Vigo award. In 1998 he receives the Henri-Jeanson award from the French Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD). This is followed by Rien sur Robert (1999) and Petites Coupures (2003), which was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival, and Je Pense à Vous (2006), three dramatic comedies constructed around a series of unexpected events which concern the problematic relationships between the male protagonists and their wives. He then pens the 2008 Le grand alibi, an adaptation of an Agatha Christie Novel, and Cherchez Hortense (2012).
In 2016, Bonitzer co-writes (with Agnés de Sacy) and directs Tout de Suite Maintenant, and publishes La Vision Partielle: Écrits sur le Cinéma, a compilation of texts written for the Cahiers du Cinéma during his fifteen-year- tenure there.