Multi-faceted maverick of contemporary French cinema. Berri began his career as an actor and moved behind the camera in the early 1960s, earning critical praise for short films like "Le poulet" (1963).

Since the formation of his production company RENN in 1968, Berri has been involved with an impressive array of quality films by Claude Zidi, Bertrand Blier and Maurice Pialat, among others. In 1973 he developed a distribution arm, AMLF, which has since handled over 150 films.

Among RENN-produced films are Roman Polanski's "Tess" (1979) and the Jean-Jacques Annaud projects "The Bear" (1988) and