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Costa-Gavras Interview (Le Capital)

Costa-Gavras

Costa-Gavras is a Greek-French filmmaker who is commonly associated with thrillers concerned with political stories, though his oeuvre is much more varied in style and theme.

Still perhaps best known for Z (1969) and Missing (1982), two political thrillers of the highest order, Gavras’ filmography also includes a recurring interest in the holocaust (Music Box (1989) and Amen. (2003)), the media (Betrayed (1988) and Mad City (1997)), nationhood (Hanna K. (1983), Eden Is West (2009)), as well as a recent interest in economic stories told with back comedy: Le Couperet (2005) and Le Capital (2012). He is currently the president of the Cinémathèque Française, a position he has held twice and spanning ten years.

Costa premiered Le Capital at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. We were thrilled to host Costa at our TIFF studio space, Onsite [at] OCAD U, where we talked in-depth about his latest film, its relationship to his body of work as a whole, working with Gad Elmaleh, and even touched on some of his less commented upon films.

 

 

This interview is from our extensive 2012 Toronto International Film Festival coverage and the full length interview was released in January 2013.

By Christopher Heron

Christopher Heron is one of the co-founders of The Seventh Art. He's conducted over 60 long-form interviews for the publication, and his written work includes numerous video essays, investigating formal traits in films and filmmakers. He received his MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto, where his work explored cinematic representations of urban space with special attention paid to the films of Pedro Costa and Tsai Ming-liang.