Michel Hazanavicius

Michel Haznavicius (born 29 March 1967) is a French film director, producer and screenwriter best known for his spy movie parodies OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio, both of which star Jean Dujardin. His 2011 film The Artist competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival but lost to The Tree of Life. Dujardin though won the best actor prize at Cannes for his role in The Artist. Hazanavicius was born in Paris.

His family is Jewish, and originally from Lithuania. His grandparents were from both Poland and Lithuania and settled in France in the 1920s. Before directing films, Hazanavicius worked in television, beginning with the Canal+ channel, where he started as a director in 1988. He began directing commercials for companies such as Reebok and Bouygues Telecom, and then, in 1993, he made his first feature-length film, La Classe américaine, for television.

The film, co-directed with Dominique Mézerette, consisted entirely of footage taken from various films produced by the Warner Bros. studio, re-edited and dubbed into French. In 1997, Hazanavicius directed his first short film, Echec au capital, and followed it up with his first theatrically released feature, Mes amis, which starred his brother, actor Serge Hazanavicius.