“I really hope that my movies are going to turn people into better people.  Even if it’s just that much … that’s something. Today there are a lot of movies that I feel are trying to make us worse. What I’d like to do with as little means as I have … is to make people better.”

Leconte was born in 1947 in Paris but spent his childhood in Tours in the Loire Valley.   He dreamed of studying film in Paris, and achieved this dream in the 60s, only to become disillusioned with the elitist and stuffy nature of the institution.  He worked as a cartoonist and a film critic until he made his first feature film in 1979 but it was not until Monsieur Hire (1989) that he came to international attention.  Throughout his long career Leconte has been a prolific and very varied filmmaker.  His projects seem to have little in common,  and are not high-profile, but you will find they linger in the memory like no others.