László Nemes born February 18 1977 is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter His 2015 debut feature film Son of Saul was screened in the main competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Grand Prix Nemes was born in Budapest Hungary but grew up in Paris He is the son of film director András Jeles He got interested in filmmaking at an early age when he made horror films in the basement of their Paris home After studying History International Relations and Screenwriting he started working as an assistant director in France and Hungary on short and feature films For two years he worked as Béla Tarrs assistant After directing his first 35mm short film With a Little Patience he moved to New York to study film directing Beginning in September 2011 he spent five months in Paris as part of a scholarship program arranged by the Cinéfondation where he in collaboration with Clara Royer developed the script for Son of Saul Description above from the Wikipedia article László Nemes licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia