The director was born in 1964 the son of a farming family in VillefranchedeRouergue in the southwest of France where most of his films are set His most successful film to date Stranger by the Lake won the Best Director Award in Un Certain Regard at Cannes as well as the Queer Palm Also a novelist he published his debut title Ici commence la nuit in 2014 His film Staying Vertical screened in competition at the 2016 Cannes film festival