On this date in 1933, Oscar-winner Costa-Gavras (full name Konstantinos “Kostas” Gavras), perhaps the most acclaimed political filmmaker of his era, was born in Loutra Iraias, Greece.
The political views of his father (a member of the Greek Resistance during World War II and a Communist Party member) led to Costa-Gavras emigrating to France at age 18 for his education. He studied at the Sorbonne before enrolling in the Institute of Higher Cinematographic Studies to study filmmaking. He hit his stride with his third film, “Z” (1969), a thinly fictionalized tale of political assassination in Greece that electrified audiences the world over.
Subsequently, he made movies on subjects ranging from U.S.-backed repression in Latin America (“State of Siege,” “Missing”) to show trials in the Soviet bloc (“The Confession”) to critiques of the media (“Mad City”) and corporate world (“The Axe”). “He was certainly one of my earliest role models,” said filmmaker Oliver Stone. Steven Soderbergh and Ben Affleck have also cited him as an inspiration.
Costa-Gavras pioneered the political suspense genre. In doing so, he ensured an audience for his movies far beyond what they would have had if they been accusatory polemics. He garnered numerous awards and accolades. “Z” earned two Academy Awards in 1970 for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Film Editing and the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Costa-Gavras shared the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar with Donald Stewart for “Missing” in 1983.
Costa-Gavras occasionally confirmed his lack of religion, choosing his father’s atheism over his mother’s “obsessive Orthodox Catholic” beliefs. (New York Times, Jan. 11, 1970) One of his movies that took on organized religion directly was “Amen” (2002), which spotlighted the indifference of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII to the Holocaust, in good part because, the movie suggests, the Catholic Church felt the Nazis posed less of a danger than the “godless Communists” from the Soviet Union.
He also depicted a cardinal helping a Nazi camp commandant escape to Latin America. The Catholic League took umbrage at “Amen,” and a priest confronted him at a press conference where Costa-Gavras staunchly defended the film: “I read around 20 books on the subject, written from different viewpoints, but what they all agreed on was the Vatican’s complete silence, which is what I show in my movie,” he told an interviewer.
He married French journalist Michèle Ray in 1968. They met on the production of “Z” and had three children together: Alexandre, Julie and Romaine Gavras. While the pace of his movie-making slowed in the 21st century, Costa-Gavras was still directing films in his 90s. “Last Breath” was released in 2024.
PHOTO: Costa-Gavras in 2017; photo by Georges Biard under CC 3.0.
