Gilles de Maistre

Gilles de Maistre is a French filmmaker who has made both narrative and non-fiction independent films for both French television and the cinema, starting with The Boy from Lebanon (aka Killer Kid) (1994), on which De Maistre was director, writer, and associate producer, co-starring Tewfik Jallab and Younesse Boudache, and which premiered in the Cannes Junior sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival, in which it won both the jury prize and the grand prix du public. De Maistre was the producer of co-writer/director Jérôme Cornuau’s musical comedy-drama, Bouge! (1997) with Ambre Boukebza, Ophélie Winter, and Patrick Forster-Delmas.

De Maistre was the producer of Manuel Poirier’s documentary, De la lumière quand meme (2000), and then De Maistre returned to narrative filmmaking as director/writer/producer of the political thriller, Féroce (2002), starring Samy Naceri, Bernard Le Coq, Claire Keim, and Jean-Marc Thibault. De Maistre reunited with filmmaker Jérôme Cornuau as executive producer of the Canadian-backed suspense thriller, Disssonances (2003), co-starring Jacques Gamblin, Berenice Bejo, and Didier Flamand.

Gilles de Maistre was co-writer/director of the documentary produced by Walt Disney Pictures/Mai-Juin Productions about mothers giving birth, Le premier cri (2007), which was nominated for a Cesar Award for best documentary. De Maistre spent the next decade making television fiction and non-fiction movies, and then returned to theatrical releases as director/writer/producer of the hagiographic portrait of renowned French chef Alain Ducasse, The Quest of Alain Ducasse (2017), with appearances by François Hollande, Emmanuel Macron, Prince Albert of Monaco, Laurent Fabius, and Donald Trump, and released in France by Pathe and in the US by Magnolia Pictures.

De Maistre was director-producer of the French/German/South African family adventure, Mia and the White Lion (2018), which was filmed over three years and co-starred Daniah De Villiers, Langley Kirkwood, and Mélanie Laurent, and grossed a strong $36.4 million globally for distributor StudioCanal. De Maistre directed the climate crisis documentary backed by Canal Plus, Forward: Tomorrow Belongs To Us (2019), which profiles Jose Adolfo, winner of the 2018 Children’s Climate Prize, and his work with a climate-focused eco-bank for poor kids and youth in Peru, as well as international youth.

Gilles de Maistre was director/co-writer (with screenwriter and wife Prune de Maistre) of the family movie, The Wolf and the Lion (2021), co-starring Molly Kunz, Graham Greene, and Charlie Carrick, grossing $18.5 million for distributor StudioCanal. De Maistre directed his first English-language narrative theatrical feature, Autumn and the Black Jaguar (2024), written by Prune de Maistre, and co-starring Emily Bett Rickards, Lumi Pollack, and Wayne Charles Baker, and earning returns exceeding $21 million for StudioCanal.