Born Konstantinos Gavras in Loutra-Iraias, Greece; educated at the Sorbonne, Paris (comparative literature) and IDHEC, Paris (producing, directing). Constantin Costa-Gavras is the preeminent figure in the development of the political thriller during the past two decades. Several of his films (STATE OF SIEGE, 1973, MISSING, 1982) are archetypes of the genre and Z (1969) is a crucial fictional account of political repression in the 20th century. Born to a Russian father and a Greek mother, Costa-Gavras was mesmerized as a boy by the energy and movement of the many American films he saw. Because of his father's activities in the Greek resistance during WWII, Costa-Gavras's educational and occupational opportunities were stifled when the rightist Greek government blacklisted him. When he failed to obtain a visa to the US Costa-Gavras went to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne. Like other young cinéastes such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, he haunted the Cinémathèque Française and the Left Bank repertory film theaters. In November 1954 he enrolled in IDHEC, the French national film school. After completing his formal training in 1958 Costa-Gavras started work as a directorial trainee, receiving valuable mentorship from, among others, René Clement, René Clair and Jacques Demy. His first film, THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER (1965), a detective thriller starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, was followed by the overtly political SHOCK TROOPS, a tale of the French Maquis starring Michel Piccoli. Shown at the Moscow Film Festival in 1967, SHOCK TROOPS was re-edited and given a happy ending by United Artists prior to its American release in 1969. While preparing another project, Costa-Gavras discovered Vassilis Vassilikos's novel Z, based on the events surrounding the assassination of Greek reformer Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. His film version, starring Yves Montand, Irene Papas and Jean-Louis Trintignant, was released as a French/Algerian co-production in 1969 and touched the consciousness of young cinéastes, critics and political activists around the world. Z won the jury and best actor prizes at Cannes as well as the Oscar for best foreign film. It also spawned a host of imitations in France and the US. The film deals with the themes which have remained central to Costa-Gavras's work: the mechanics and repercussions of tyranny and the subtle varieties of guilt. Hugely successful in France and abroad (but banned in Greece), it remains a landmark of recent cinema. THE CONFESSION (1970) followed, again based on a true incident in which a spurious confession was tortured out of a Czech Communist Party functionary (Yves Montand) and used in a sham trial. With STATE OF SIEGE, Costa-Gavras completed an intensely creative period. Another fictionalized treatment of an actual event, the film tells the story of a clandestine American intelligence agent (Montand) assassinated by Uraguayan political terrorists. STATE OF SIEGE also witnessed the maturation of Costa-Gavras' working method: beginning with a novelistic retelling of a single event and working in close collaboration with his screenwriter, the director meticulously researches the details of the incident, which is then brought to the screen via a highly disciplined but visually eclectic shooting style. SPECIAL SECTION (1975) reunited Costa-Gavras with Jorge Semprun, the screenwriter of Z, on a project devoted to the activities of the French Vichy government. Roundly criticized by French patriots who had hoped for a melodramatic rewriting of wartime events, SPECIAL SECTION is a meditative and even-handed study of one of the most painful periods of French history. CLAIR DE FEMME, an emphatically apolitical film starring Montand and Romy Schneider, was released in 1979. The American focus of STATE OF SIEGE and the director's own fascination with American political culture have been developed in his most recent films. MISSING (1982), with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, told of the kidnapping and death-squad murder of Charles Horman, a leftist American journalist, in Chile in 1973. The film attracted criticism (as have all Costa-Gavras's films since Z) from doctrinaire Marxists for its use of dramatic devices to invoke sympathy for an individual victim of political repression. Yet MISSING was well calibrated for its American audience, which responded enthusiastically to the most significant political thriller made in the US since THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. BETRAYED (1988), starring Tom Berenger and Debra Winger, explores the underworld of racist politics in rural America. MUSIC BOX (1989) relates the trial of an alleged Hungarian war criminal (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who has been a US citizen for 40 years; he is defended in court by his daughter (Jessica Lange). Costa-Gavras's recent work has amply demonstrated his understanding of the American character, as well as his ability to introduce dramatic tensions into politically themed films. Some of his other recent films are MAD CITY (1997), AMEN / EYEWITNESS (2002), and LE COUPERET / THE AX (2005). In 1982 Costa-Gavras took over the directorship of the Cinémathèque Française, then badly in disarray. During his tenure, he proved a tireless champion of both film preservation and artistic freedom, furthering the institution's international renown even as he continued to work on his own films. Costa-Gavras remains a passionate cinephile, a tireless researcher and a storyteller of profound skill and integrity. Over the years, Costa-Gavras has won 15 international awards for his films.  Nominated for Directing 1969: Z  Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay based on material from another medium) 1969: Z (w. Jorge Semprun)  Writing (Best Screenplay based on material from another medium) 1982: MISSING (w. Donald Stewart) 3 nominations, 1 Award