Étienne Chatiliez
French film director
Étienne Chatiliez (born 17 June 1952) is a French film director.
Life and career
He was born in Roubaix, France, the son of Pierre Chatiliez, an insurance worker, and Denise Rateau,, and grew up in Marcq-en-Barœul near Lille with his elder brother and sister. He studied at the Lycée Yves-Kernanec in Marcq-en-Barœul.
Chatiliez began his career as an editor at Europe 1 and then for an advertising agency CLM&BBDO where he spent seven years as a writer editor. He edited many television adverts, winning several awards, before moving into cinema..
With an assistant in publicity Florence Quentin his move to the big screen was a huge success, and La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille launched many catchphrases, in "an acerbic, grating, insolent comedy", presenting two utterly contrasted families the bourgeois Le Quesnoy, and the proletarian Groseille. In this and subsequent films, he scratches away the surface of decorum and family myths, with an abrasive humou where the audience are both disturbed and amused, and which make the viewer uncomfortable yet touch them deeply.
In 2002 he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Filmography
1988 - Life is a Long Quiet River (won Cesars for Best First Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay or Adaptation)
1990 - Tatie Danielle
1995 - Happiness is in the Field
2000 - Drugs!
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q289512. VIAF identifies the subject as 27091064. The Library of Congress control number is nr97040859. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2002, 1988 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Étienne Chatiliez” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.