Olivier Nakache

Origins and early life

Olivier Nakache was born at Puteaux, west of Paris, on 15 April 1973 to a father who managed computer systems and a mother who worked as an accounting assistant, both of them Jews; his family belonged to the Jewish community of Algeria that left for France after independence, part of the Sephardi exodus of the early 1960s. His sister is the actress and director Géraldine Nakache. He did not go to film school: he trained in the Jewish youth movement Yaniv, running summer camps for children, and it was at a gathering of Yaniv camp counsellors at Le Chesnay in 1995 that he met Éric Toledano, the son of Moroccan Jews, with whom he has written and directed every film since.

Work and career

Their first feature, Nos jours heureux in 2006, drew directly on the summer camps where they had learned the trade. In 2011 they made Intouchables, the story of a rich quadriplegic and the young man from the projects who becomes his carer, which sold more than nineteen million tickets in France, became one of the most widely seen French films ever made anywhere, and won Omar Sy the César for best actor. They went on to make Samba, Le Sens de la fête, Hors normes, which closed the Cannes festival in 2019, and Une année difficile.

Their films return again and again to people the social order has placed on opposite sides of a line and to what happens when they are forced to share a room.