French director, screenwriter, producer and actor Mathieu Kassovitz born in Paris, France on 3 August 1967, best known for his Cannes-winning drama La Haine. Kassovitz is also the founder of MNP Entreprise, a film production company. Kassovitz is most famous outside France for his role as Nino Quincampoix in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie. Among many other credits, he also had small roles in La Haine (which he also directed), Birthday Girl, Café Au Lait and The Fifth Element. He also played one of the main roles in Amen (2003) by Costa-Gavras. Kassovitz is also recognizable for playing a conflicted Belgian explosives expert in Steven Spielberg's controversial 2005 film Munich, alongside Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush.
As a filmmaker, Kassovitz has made several artistic and commercial successes. He wrote and directed La Haine (Hate, 1995), a hugely controversial film in France dealing with race relations. The film won the César Award for Best Film and netted Kassovitz the Best Director prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
He later directed Les Rivières Pourpres (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another massive commercial success in France, and Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller (considered by some to be a commercial failure, although it grossed over twice its roughly $40 million budget), with Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz that he did to earn the money he needed to develop a far more personal project Babylon Babies, the adaptation of one of Maurice Dantec's books.
Kassovitz established the film production firm MNP Entreprise in 2000 "to develop and produce feature films by Kassovitz and to represent him as a director and actor.” MNP Entreprise is responsible for the co-productions of a number of films including Avida (2006) in which Kassovits acts and Babylon A.D. which he directed. Kassovitz purchased the film rights for the novel Johnny Mad Dog by Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala. The film was also co-produced by MNP Entreprise, and directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.
MNP Entreprise's upcoming titles are Rebellion, MNP and also Dust Motion, that he will co-direct with young director K-Michel Parandi. Kassovitz will both star in and direct Rebellion, a war film based on a true story of French commandos who clashed with tribes in New Caledonia, the Melanesian territory of France.