Lancelot of the Lake

French filmmaker born in 1901 who passed away in 1999, and whose filmography reached Spanish cinemas thanks to Seminci. The festival premiered and awarded his films starting from its second edition, later dedicating a complete retrospective to his work in 1975. Initially trained as a painter, he was a prisoner of the Germans during World War II and, after his liberation, released ‘Les Anges du péché’ (1943), his first feature film. Over almost half a century, he directed only thirteen feature films, including masterpieces such as ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ (1951), ‘A Man Escaped’ (1956), ‘Pickpocket’ (1959), ‘The Trial of Joan of Arc’ (1962), ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ (1966), and ‘Mouchette’ (1967). He created a unique cinematic language, marked by austerity and minimalism, filming with non-professional actors, authentic locations and direct sound, and wrote decisive treatises for film theory such as 'Notes on Cinematography’.