François Margolin

Nacimiento : 1957-03-29, Paris, France

Historia

François Margolin, born on the 29th of March 1957, alumnus from FEMIS (French National Film School), combines the hats of writer, director and producer. He directed Mensonge in 1994, with Nathalie Baye, The Opium of the Talibans in 2001 and Les Petits Soldats (about Child Soldiers in Liberia) in 2005. His first short movie, Elle et Lui, won the famous Jean Vigo Prize. His work as a producer won him to work with prestigious directors like Raoul Ruiz (Nucingen House, Dias de Campo), Hou Hsiao-Hsien (The Flight of the Red Balloon), Raymond Depardon (Empty Quarter, une Femme en Afrique), Olivier Assayas (Boarding Gate) or Costa Gavras and Abbas Kiarostami for the omnibus documentary À propos de Nice, la suite. In 1986 he created the production company of Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris and worked as a journalist during the eighties for Liberation and L’Express, in Africa and Afghanistan. He published a successful book about the Black Jews of Ethiopia, We were the only Jews in the World, in 2008.

Películas

Sons of Cain
Producer
"Sons of Cain" is set in a small village in northern Albania. In this place time is suspended and the severe rules of an old code (Kanun) still dictate the life and death of the inhabitants. A group of seven children obliged to live under this code meet and discuss the story of Cain and Abel. Creating their own dream space, partially consciously and partially not, they create an analogy between their own stories and Bible stories. Stuck on the fine line between reality and forgetfulness, this is one of the few chances they have to come to grips with their traumas and emotions.
Dirty Lands
Producer
A deminer in the war against Daesh, a Kurdish fighter loses his hand in an accident. He became a taxi driver but, not having a driving license for the disabled, the police seized his vehicle. Under pressure from his wife who wants him to go to Europe, the man is ready for anything...
Napalm
Producer
"Napalm" es la narración del estremecedor "breve encuentro", en 1958, entre un miembro francés de la primera delegación de Europa Occidental invitada a Corea del Norte tras la devastadora guerra de Corea y una enfermera del hospital de la Cruz Roja coreana, en Pyongyang, la capital de la República Democrática Popular de Corea. La enfermera Kim Kun Sun y el delegado francés solo tenían una sola palabra en común que ambos comprendían: "Napalm", que dio título a la película. Claude Lanzmann regresó a Corea sin autorización para filmar y cada plano representa una extraordinaria victoria sobre el control permanente de la policía política del régimen, que no descubrió las auténticas razones de su regreso a la península de este norte extremo hasta sesenta años más tarde.
Tres banderas, Mosul
Producer
Durante semanas un equipo de televisión, encabezado por el reportero iraní Soran Qurbani, convivió con las fuerzas especiales iraquíes bautizadas como la Golden Division para retratar la guerra y el terror en el que vive Irak.
Peshmerga
Producer
From July to December 2015, with a camera team in tow, Bernard-Henri Lévy journeyed 1,000 km along the frontline separating Iraqi Kurdistan from Islamic State troops. The journey resulted in an illustrated logbook offering a special insight into an unfinished war with a global impact. Alongside the Peshmergas – Kurdish fighters imbued with a spirit of unfailing determination in their fight against obscurantism and jihadism, the film takes us from the heights of Mosul to the heart of the Sinjar mountains, passing the last Christian monasteries threatened with destruction along the way. A tale peopled by real characters, men and women whose faces are rarely seen...
Hotel Europa
Producer
En el hotel Europa, uno de los más grandes de Sarajevo, van a recibir a una delegación de diplomáticos europeos para conmemorar el centenario del atentado que inició la Primera Guerra Mundial. En las cocinas se prepara una huelga de los trabajadores, que llevan dos meses sin cobrar. Mientras tanto, una periodista filma un programa de televisión en la azotea y un hombre, que podría formar parte (o no) de la delegación, ensaya un discurso en su habitación.
Jihadists
Director
A documentary that takes us to the heart of jihadism in Mali
The Art Dealer
Screenplay
A young woman is searching, today, in Paris, the collection of paintings stolen from her Jewish family during WWII.
The Art Dealer
Director
A young woman is searching, today, in Paris, the collection of paintings stolen from her Jewish family during WWII.
Ballet aquatique
In one of his very last projects, Raul Ruiz celebrates the films of his historical predecessor Jean Painlevé, a documentary innovator whose work always blended science with surrealism. Ruiz and friends further perfect the art of mystification. Why it is so difficult to count fish in an aquarium? Ruiz, his loyal actor Melvil Poupaud and his producer François Margolin come up with a wide range of hypotheses. With their bone-dry wit, they keep up the tradition of the French pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions. (IFFR)
Secretos
Producer
After long decades of exile, a leftist former activist returns to Chile to settle accounts with his conscience, related to the death of a colleague and political hero . The task of Atalibar is to reveal his secret. But his view clashes with the current country, godless, far from the old ideologies and where all his old colleagues have changed.
Nucingen House
(voice)
Surreal gothic comedy about a gambler who wins a strange Chilean mansion and takes his frail wife there.
Nucingen House
Producer
Surreal gothic comedy about a gambler who wins a strange Chilean mansion and takes his frail wife there.
Boarding Gate
Producer
Sandra, una joven italiana establecida en Londres, huye a Hong Kong para librarse de las turbulentas relaciones que mantenía con un magnate de las finanzas y con un asesino a sueldo que planea matar al primero...
La Recta Provincia
Associate Producer
This was a man. He lived with his mother. He cared a manor house in the countryside of Chile. One day the man found a bone in the garden. The bone was bored. That was a bone flute. The man with the flute music play. And music song became. The voice of the song begging to seek the other bones of his scattered body. The man and his mother were in those ways of God and hell, looking for the bones that make up the skeleton of that Christian. And give him a Christian burial. And they saw what they saw, they lived what they lived. Many stories lived. And although they did not tell anyone, others told them.
El vuelo del globo rojo
Writer
Suzanne es una madre separada que trabaja de narradora en un espectáculo de marionetas. Como dispone de poco tiempo para estar con su hijo Simón, contrata como niñera a Song Fang, una estudiante taiwanesa. Pronto entre ellos dos se establece un mundo propio y lleno de complicidades, en el que juega un papel importante un misterioso globo rojo.
El vuelo del globo rojo
Producer
Suzanne es una madre separada que trabaja de narradora en un espectáculo de marionetas. Como dispone de poco tiempo para estar con su hijo Simón, contrata como niñera a Song Fang, una estudiante taiwanesa. Pronto entre ellos dos se establece un mundo propio y lleno de complicidades, en el que juega un papel importante un misterioso globo rojo.
Días de campo
Producer
In a bar in Santiago, two old men talk over their past. This is a strange discussion. In fact, they talk of themselves as if they were dead. We don't know what is true or false, what is dream or reality.
Les petits soldats
Writer
Octubre de 2003: 14 años de guerra en Liberia han creado cientos de niños soldados. Enero de 2004: Los educadores están tratando de que estos niños cuya infancia se ha disparado en el salvajismo regresen a unas vidas "normales". Sus historias de guerra son monstruosas, pero dejar de escuchar sería negar cualquier intento de reconstrucción…
Les petits soldats
Director
Octubre de 2003: 14 años de guerra en Liberia han creado cientos de niños soldados. Enero de 2004: Los educadores están tratando de que estos niños cuya infancia se ha disparado en el salvajismo regresen a unas vidas "normales". Sus historias de guerra son monstruosas, pero dejar de escuchar sería negar cualquier intento de reconstrucción…
OAS, Une histoire interdite
Director
The Pilgrimage of Students and Jacob
Producer
Concerning Nice
Producer
Anthology of short films about the French city of Nice, by various directors. A homage to Jean Vigo and his "À propos de Nice" from 1930.
Mensonge
Director
Emma has been happily married to Charles, a hardworking journalist, for over ten years. They have a son, and are considering having another child when she learns that she is both pregnant and HIV-positive at a time when Charles is away. As Emma has never used drugs or slept around, and has never had a blood transfusion, there can only be one source for her infection: her absent husband. Shocked to the core by this turn of events, she goes through his things and finds an address book with the names of many women in it. Determined to discover what has been going on, she begins contacting every name in the book. She continues her investigations even after her husband, whom she confronts over this, returns.
Empty Quarter: A Woman in Africa
Producer
A man invites a woman to share his room in a hostel and gradually falls in love with her.
Les secrets de la princesse de Cadignan
Producer
"Don Juan woman", according to the expression of Balzac. A princess, a great seductress. Of a diabolical intelligence. This woman, who has had many lovers - almost all the male characters of the "Comédie Humaine" -, will finally find love. The real one. The great one.
Paris, The Visit
Director
A video documentary of Paris.