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Philippe Lioret

French director and screenwriter Philippe Lioret began his motion picture career from the audio side: beginning in 1982, the Parisian native spent a decade working as a sound engineer and mixer. His work during this period included films like Michael Apted's "Bring On The Night," a 1985 documentary about rock superstar Sting's move from The Police's new wave rock into a jazz-influenced solo career, and Robert Altman's 1987's screen adaptation of Christopher Durang's black-humored farce "Beyond Therapy." Lioret moved into auteurdom with 1993's "Lost In Transit," which he directed and co-wrote with screenwriter Michel Ganz. A comedy-drama about a traveling businessman (Jean Rochefort) who loses his passport and becomes stranded in a Kafkaesque no man's land with a band of fellow airport refugees, the film comments subtly on the topic of illegal immigration. Lioret returned to that theme with the sober art-house hit "Welcome" in 2009, telling the story of a teenage Kurdish refugee from Iraq (Firat Ayverdi) whose cross-European journey lands him in the coastal city of Calais, France, at a time of increasing governmental and societal pressure on illegal immigrants. Along with his more politically-minded films, Lioret has also written and directed popular French hits like the dysfunctional-family drama "Don't Worry, I'm Fine," the romantic comedy "Mademoiselle," and the tearjerker "The Light."