French director Xavier Durringer, who best known internationally for his 2011 film The Conquest about the ascent to power of then president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has died at the age at the 61.
News agency AFP reported that the filmmaker, screenwriter and playwright died of a heart attack on October 4 at his home in the town of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the South of France.
Durringer was born on December 1, 1963 in the town of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles on the outskirts of Paris.
He started out in theater, frequenting Robert Cordier’s Acting International in Paris, and setting up the La Lézarde company in the 1980s.
His best known plays are A Rose Under the Skin (1988), La Quille (1999), Histoires d’Hommes (2005) and Les Déplacés (2005).
He broke into cinema in 1993 with comedy-drama La Nage Indienne (Sidestroke), about three youngsters whose dream of a simple life on the banks of Lake Annecy does not go to plan, featuring Karin Viard in one of her first starring roles.
Other feature credits Chok-Dee: The Kickboxer, inspired by the real-life story of its star Dida Diafat, who found redemption in kickboxing after a troubled youth and became the first French Muay Thai champion.
Durringer is best known internationally for The Conquest, starring Denis Polyades as then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which world premiered Out of Competition in Cannes in 2011.
Capturing Sarkozy’s political ascent from 2002 to 2007, it created a stir in France as the first film about a French president to be released when he was still in power, and for its tackling of his personal life and crumbling marriage.
Reviews out of Cannes, however, judged the drama, co-written by Durringer with Patrick Rotman, as relatively light, and the release was less of a bombshell moment than expected.
Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 and 2012, told French magazine TV Mag in 2016 that he had never watched the film.
“I find it hard to watch films – or read article – which talk about me… you have less perspective,” he said, adding: “This film talks about a period in my life which was complicated: I didn’t have a spontaneous desire to revisit it.”
More recent credits include the TV movie Don’t Leave Me, about a woman who discovers her daughter has been radicalized and is on the verge of traveling to Syria. It won an International Emmy Award for best TV movie, mini-series in 2017.
At the time of this death, Durringer was reportedly gearing up for the shoot of Rock’n Roll Fan, about a Johnny Hallyday fan who dreams of playing the late rocker on stage, for Paris-based production company YTA.
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