Tony Gatlif

Tony Gatlif was a French film director whose 20 or so films often told of Roma music and culture. His film Exils won the prize for best director at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. He was born on 10 September 1948 in Algiers and died on 2 September 2026 in Arles, in the south of France.

Born Michel Boualem Dahmani, he had a Kabyle father and a Gitane mother of Andalusian origin. The Gitans are the Roma of Spain and southern France. He arrived in France in 1960, at the age of 12, during the war of independence.

His first years in France were hard, and he ended up in a reform school. In 1966 the young man went backstage after a play to meet the actor Michel Simon, who wrote him a letter of recommendation.

Thanks to that letter, he joined drama classes at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he learned his lines phonetically, by their sounds. After some years on stage, he directed his first film, La Tête en ruine, in 1975.

From Corre, gitano in 1981, the Roma became the heart of his work. Latcho Drom, in 1993, followed their music across several countries, and Gadjo Dilo, with Romain Duris, came out in 1997. Exils, in 2004, took him back to Algeria, the land of his childhood.

Ange, his last film, came out in 2025. When he died, Gatlif was working on a historical film. His family praised his generosity, joy, poetry and love of music.