Costa Gavras

Costa-Gavras
Costa-Gavras at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival
Born	Konstantinos Gavras (1933-02-12) 12 February 1933 (age 84) Loutra Iraias, Greece
Alma mater	Sorbonne Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies
Spouse(s)	Michèle Ray

Costa-Gavras (short for Konstantinos Gavras; Κωνσταντίνος Γαβράς; born 12 February 1933) is a Greek-French film director and producer, who lives and works in France. He is known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller Z (1969), but he has also made comedies. Most of his movies have been made in French; however, six were made in English: Missing (1982), Hanna K. (1983), Betrayed (1988), Music Box (1989), Mad City (1997) and Amen. (2002). He produces most of his films himself, through his production company K.G. Productions.

Costa-Gavras was born in Loutra Iraias (Λουτρά Ηραίας), Arcadia. His family spent the Second World War in a village in the Peloponnese, and moved to Athens after the war. His father had been a member of the Pro-Soviet branch of the Greek Resistance, and was imprisoned during the Greek Civil War. His father's Communist Party membership made it impossible for Costa-Gavras to attend university in Greece or to be granted a visa to the United States, so after high school he went to France, where he began studying law in 1951.

In 1956, he left his university studies to study film at the French national film school, IDHEC. After film school, he apprenticed under Yves Allégret, and became an assistant director for Jean Giono and René Clair. After several further positions as first assistant director, he directed his first feature film, Compartiment Tueurs, in 1965.