ASPHALT TANGO

He was born in Bucharest in 1960. He graduated from Bucharest’s Academy of Theater and Cinema in 1984. He began by making shorts, which won prizes at several international festivals, then went on to write numerous screenplays for the French Compagnie des Images between 1989 and 1991. His first feature film, Don’t Lean Out the Window, a Romanian-French coproduction, won awards in Montpellier, La Baule and Bratislava. His subsequent films were box-office hits as well as critical successes. In 1995, he directed Asphalt Tango, another French- Romanian comedy with Charlotte Rampling in the leading role and, in 1999, Dolce far niente starring Francois Cluzet and Giancarlo Giannini. His black comedy Philanthropy (2001) won the Audience Award at the Paris FF and various other prizes in Wiesbaden, Mons,Wurzburg, Bratislava and Newport Beach, and screened at the Thessaloniki IFF in 2002.Written in 1988, The Rest Is Silence, received the Best Screenplay Award at the Paris FF in 1995 and Second Prize at the Hartley-Merrill International Screenwriting Competition in Los Angeles in 1999.