
JEAN-FRANÇOIS LAGUIONIE
Born in 1939 in Besançon, France, Jean-François Laguionie studied applied arts before Paul Grimault initiated him to animation. He then started making his own first shorts. In 1978, he received the Palme d’Or for the Best Short Film in Cannes for Rowing Across the Atlantic. Afterwards he started to direct feature-length films with Gwen, the Book of Sand (1985), before working on A Monkey’s Tale (1999), a much more ambitious and mainstream film than his previous ones. In 2004 he adapted his own novel Black Mor’s Island, followed by Louise by the Shore which is released in 2016. The Prince’s Voyage (2019) is his sixth feature film and is set in the same world as A Monkey’s Tale.