Laurent Tirard

French film director and screenwriter (1967–2024)

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Laurent Tirard (18 February 1967 – 5 September 2024) was a French film director and screenwriter.

Life and career

Laurent Tirard was born on 18 February 1967 in Roubaix, France. He grew up admiring American films, such as those by Steven Spielberg. Later, he studied filmmaking at New York University, worked as a script reader for Warner Bros. Studios, became a journalist, and worked for the French film magazine Studio for six years.

There, he conducted a series of interviews on filmmaking, published as a book titled Moviemakers' Master Class: Private Lessons from the World's Foremost Directors. From Woody Allen to David Cronenberg, the Coen brothers to Lars Von Trier, all film directors run up against the same essential concerns: how to direct actors, for example, or whether to pre-plan camera angles. In interviewing these and 16 other notable filmmakers, Tirard found notable affinities between seemingly dissimilar directors. The book has also been published in France, Canada, England, Italy, Spain, and Brazil.

In 1997, he left the magazine and began writing scripts for film and television while directing two short films in 1999 and 2000. He wrote and directed his first feature, The Story of My Life, in 2004, co-wrote the hugely successful Prête-moi ta main (How to Get Married and Stay Single) for Alain Chabat in 2006, then wrote and directed his second film, Molière, the following year. Molière was entered into the 29th Moscow International Film Festival.

He directed the film adaptation of the popular French children's book Le petit Nicolas: Little Nicholas in 2009 and its sequel Nicholas on Holiday in 2014.

Tirard died in Paris on 5 September 2024, at the age of 57, after a long battle with cancer.