Director Tony Gatliff, famous for films such as Gadjo Dilo The explorer of Roma culture died in the southern French city of Arles on September 3 at the age of 77.
Director Michel Boualem Dahmani was born in Algiers on September 10, 1948, to a Kabyle father and a mother of Andalusian and Gaetan origin.
He had a difficult childhood, growing up in poverty in the slums on the outskirts of the Algerian capital, which he left for France at the age of fourteen in the early 1960s. After a period of fragility and petty crime, a meeting with his idol, actor Michel Simon, opened the door to a dramatic arts course at Germain-en-Laye outside Paris, after the latter wrote a letter of recommendation.
While gaining experience as an actor, Gatliff gradually began creating original works based on his own experiences and exploring the culture of his Roma origins.
He began directing in 1975 with The head is in ruinsfollowed by Spanish drama Gitano runsabout a young gypsy man accused of a crime he did not commit. It was the first in a series of films exploring the culture and challenges of the Romani people in Europe.
In 1992, he won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Un Certain Regard. Lacho drumA documentary about gypsy music.
This was followed by one of the most famous films, Gadjo Dilo (The crazy stranger), Starring Romain Duris as a Frenchman who travels to Romania in search of a Roma singer, whose voice he heard on tapes recorded by his late father. The film premiered at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival where it won the Silver Leopard Award.
Gatliff won the Best Director award at Cannes in 2004 for the biographical drama. Exilehis reunion with Doris and also the appearance of Lobna Azabal in the cast.
Later works included heart heart (2009), The angry one (2012), Geronimo (2014), Jam (2017), Tom Medina (2021) and save (2025).
