This French director emerged in the 1960s, scoring a popular international success with the romantic melodrama, "A Man and a Woman" (1966). Despite an early reputation as an "outsider" who combined social criticism with a flashy visual technique, Lelouch rapidly became assimilated into the mainstream of commercial French cinema, remaining prolific throughout three decades and often producing the films of other directors.

Lelouch had spent the earliest years of his childhood hiding from the Nazis alongside his mother. They were captured and sent to the Dachau concentration camp three months