Olivier Lorelle

Before breaking into the film industry, Olivier Lorelle began his career teaching philosophy by day while working as a playwright by night. In the early 1990s, however, Lorelle began focusing all of his attention on screenwriting. In 1996, his first screenplay, the French drama "Still Waters Run Deep," was released on the big screen. Lorelle would write two more feature-length dramas in the late-1990s--1997's "Kini and Adams" and 1998's "Living in Paradise"--before writing the television dramas "Tous Ensemble" and "Strada Principale." But by the early 2000s, Lorelle had returned to writing movies. In 2001 his critically acclaimed "Little Senegal" went on to win nine international film awards, including the prestigious Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Five years later, Lorelle would again team up with the director of "Little Senegal," Rachid Bouchareb, for an even bigger hit: 2006's "Days of Glory." That film--an action-drama about four North African men who enlist in the French army during World War II--would earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. When he's not writing, Lorelle teaches screenwriting at La Fémis, a prominent Paris film school, and also serves as the president of the French Guild of Screenwriters.