London River - Rachid Bouchareb

Born in France, Rachid Bouchareb attended film school in Paris. After several shorts, he directed Bâton Rouge (1985) which addressed the top of immigration. In 1989, he and friend, Jean Bréhat founded 3B Productions. In 1991, their film Cheb was crowned several times over, notably at Cannes, with the Perspectives of French Cinema Prize. In 1996, he co‐wrote and directed Dust of Life and received his first Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Film. The film set in Vietnam during the war addresses the issue of raciallymixed children of American servicemen who were often left as orphans as ostracized by society. His next film, Little Senegal (also starring Sotigui Kouyaté) explored the racial friction between Africans from the homeland and the African‐Americans whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. through the slave trade. It was presented in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2001. This film also marked his first box‐office hit in France.

All of Bouchareb's films address themes of immigration and displacement. In 2006, Days of Glory, the story of African and Maghrebin infantrymen in 1943, received a Collective Prize for Best Actors at the Festival de Cannes. Hailed across the world, the film won the César for Best Script and was nominated for the Oscar® of Best Foreign Film. His last film, Outside the Law competed for the Palme d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 and was his third Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Film.

Currently, Bouchareb is in the works to produce an Arab‐American Trilogy to address the changing relationship between Americans and the Arab world. He has finished principal photography on the first film of the trilogy, Just Like a Woman, starring Sienna Miller. The next two films will be set in the U.S. but with Arabic sensibilities including a buddy comedy and a Mexican border drama starring Forest Whitaker. All three films will be in English.

Says Bouchareb, "I'm always interested in what happens between the Arabic world and the West. I come from North Africa, I lived in Paris and I made North African and Algerian and French movies, and now movies in America. But the stories are universal."

JEAN BRÉHAT, Producer

Co‐founder of the production company 3B Productions with Rachid Bouchareb in the late 1980s, Jean Bréhat has always produced projects by his partner‐director, as well as those by Bruno Dumont. More information can be found at: http://www.3b-productions.com/
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"I would say that all my films are concerned with the subject of meetings between different people, from different countries and different worlds."
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