Born in 1963, Ilan Duran Cohen is a French director, producer and screenwriter. He runs a production company called Fugitive Productions, and is also the authour of several novels. He studied film at the New York Film School, and after making two shorts films, in 1991 he completed his first feature, Lola Zipper, as well as directed the documentary Black Cowboy.
For a while he decided to stop his film career and devote himself to his writing. In 1997 his first novel, Chronique alicienne, was published by Actes Sud. And in 1999 they published his next novel, Le Fils de la sardine.His second feature, La Confusion des genres, with Pascal Greggory, Nathalie Richard et Cyrille Thouvenin, was released in December 2000. It was selected in the Official Competition at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and both Pascal Greggory and Cyrille Thouvenin were nominated for Césars for their performances. In 2004 he directed Les Petits-Fils, with Reine Ferrato and Guillaume Quatravaux, which garnered the Grand Prix Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival. In 2006 he made the TV film Les Amants du Flore, which showed the mythic couple Jean-Paul Sartre-Simone de Beauvoir when they were students, played by Lorànt Deutsch and Anna Mouglalis.
His third theatrical feature was released in Novemeber 2008. Le Plaisir de chanter is a police comedy with Lorànt Deutsch, Marina Foïs and Jeanne Balibar. That same year Duran Cohen published his fourth novel Face aux Masses. In 2012 he completed The Jewish Cardinal, based on the life of Jean-Marie Lustiger, a converted Jew who became Archbishop of Paris in 1981, a post he held until 2005, when he resigned shortly before his death.
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