Christian Carion

Christian Carion born 4 January 1963 is a French film director dialogue writer and screenwriter gaining international attention for Joyeux Noël Merry Christmas which was nominated for several awards including the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Christian Carion was born into a family of farmers in the north of France Carions youth was spent in his parents farm fields where he was constantly reminded of World War I as the family often found dangerous unexploded shells left over from the conflicts in the fields He had also heard of the stories in which French soldiers would leave their trenches at night to meet with their wives in the surrounding Germanoccupied towns and return to fight the next morning After passing his baccalauréat he joined an engineering school affiliated to the French ministry of agriculture Later he decided to quit his scientific career and began shooting films he himself describes as uninteresting When he met Christophe Rossignon both men started to collaborate in moviemaking Carion as filmmaker and Rossignon as producer In 1999 Rossignon also acted in Carions short film Monsieur le député In 2001 Carion directed his first feature film Une hirondelle a fait le printemps The Girl from Paris the story an hommage to his upbringing tells the meeting of a brooding farmer Michel Serrault and a parisian girl seeking the calm of the countryside played by Mathilde Seigner The film attracted over 24 million of French moviegoers Following this success Carion started a more ambitious project Joyeux Noël Merry Christmas Screened in Cannes for the film festival in 2005 this historic fiction film depicts the fraternizations of warriors from three different countries on the eve of Christmas during World War I Carion stated that hed never heard of the actual Christmas truce incidents while growing up in France as the French Army and authorities suppressed them having been viewed as an act of disobedience He was introduced to the story via a historian who showed him photos and documents archived in France Great Britain and Germany The film was a commercial success It was nominated for numerous awards at the French César Awards and for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film Two years later he filmed another historic film LAffaire Farewell Farewell with Emir Kusturica and Guillaume Canet a spy film set in Russia and based on true events In 2014 he shot on the roads of northern France En mai fais ce quil te plait This movie is another historical piece about the exodus of millions of people in May 1940 when France was falling apart and the inhabitants of northern France were fleeing the German troops Written using numerous recollections from the northern people the film depicts the quest of a German dissident looking for his son The original music was composed by Ennio Morricone Description above from the Wikipedia article Christian Carion licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia