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Photo of Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Director, Writer, Producer, Editor, Actor, Additional CreditsBorn September 3, 1953 (72 years)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a French film director and screenwriter known for the films Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, Alien: Resurrection and Amélie.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet was born in Roanne, Loire, France. He bought his first camera at the age of 17 and made short films while studying animation at Cinémation Studios. He befriended Marc Caro, a designer and comic book artist who became his longtime collaborator and co-director. They met at an animation festival in Annecy in 1974.

Together, Jeunet and Caro directed award-winning animations. Their first live action film was The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981), a short film about soldiers in a bleak futuristic world. Jeunet also directed numerous advertisements and music videos, such as Jean Michel Jarre's Zoolook (together with Caro).

Jeunet's films often resonate with the late twentieth century French film movement, cinéma du look, and allude to themes and aesthetics involving German expressionism, French poetic realism, and the French New Wave.

Jeunet and Caro's first feature film was Delicatessen (1991), a melancholy comedy set in a famine-plagued post-apocalyptic world, in which an apartment building above a delicatessen is ruled by a butcher who kills people in order to feed his tenants.

They next made The City of Lost Children (1995), a dark, multi-layered fantasy film about a mad scientist who steals children's dreams so that he can live indefinitely.[3] The success of The City of Lost Children led to an invitation to direct the fourth film in the Alien series, Alien: Resurrection (1997). This is where Jeunet and Caro ended up going their separate ways as Jeunet believed this to be an amazing opportunity and Caro was not interested in a film that lacked creative control working on a big-budget Hollywood movie. Caro ended up assisting for a few weeks, with costumes and set design but afterwards, decided to work on a solo career in illustration and computer graphics.

Jeunet directed Amélie (2001), starring Audrey Tautou. Amélie is the story of a woman who takes pleasure in doing good deeds but has trouble finding love herself, was a huge critical and commercial success worldwide and was nominated for several Academy Awards. For this film, Jeunet also gained a European Film Award for Best Director.

Jeunet has also directed numerous commercials including a 2'25" film for Chanel N° 5 featuring his frequent collaborator Audrey Tautou.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Jean-Pierre Jeunet, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

  • Amélie
  • Alien: Resurrection
  • Delicatessen
  • The City of Lost Children
  • A Very Long Engagement
  • Micmacs
  • The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
  • Big Bug
  • Things I Like, Things I Don't Like
  • The Bunker of the Last Gunshots
  • Deux escargots s'en vont

Jean-Pierre Jeunet Filmography

2025
Alien, Terror in Space · as Self - Filmmaker
2011
The Extraordinary Voyage · as Self - Filmmaker
2009
C à Vous (TV Series) · as Self
2008
La Grande Librairie (TV Series) · as Self
2005
2004
2004
2003
2002
The 'Alien' Saga · as Self (archive Footage)
2002
Hep Taxi ! (TV Series) · as Self
2002
2002
Celluloid Dreams · as Self
2001
Alien Evolution · as Self
2001
The Apartment (TV Series) · as Self
2000
L'invité (TV Series) · as Self
2000
Click (2000) (TV Series) · as Self - Director
1998
Roll on Sunday (TV Series) · as Self
1993
Eurotrash (TV Series) · as Self
1992
HBO First Look (TV Series) · as Self
1991
Movie Days (TV Series) · as Self
1991
Charlie Rose (TV Series) · as Self
1987
NPA (TV Series) · as Self
1976
César Awards (TV Series) · as Self - Winner

1981
1981
The Bunker of the Last Gunshots · as Director Of Photography
1981
The Bunker of the Last Gunshots · as Costume Design

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