Romain Gavras
Romain Gavras is the Paris director who made the music video feel dangerous again. Son of Costa-Gavras, co-founder of the Kourtrajmé collective, he arrived with Justice's 'Stress' in 2008 — a hand-held descent through Paris with a gang in gold-cross jackets that critics could not decide was an indictment of violence or a participant in it.
The provocation was never the whole point; the craft under it is what lasts. 'Bad Girls' turns Moroccan desert drifting into widescreen myth, 'No Church in the Wild' stages a flare-lit riot as an oil painting, and 'Gosh' assembles 400 extras in a Chinese replica city into a single unbroken military ballet.
He has since moved to features — Athena competed for the Golden Lion at Venice in 2022 — carrying the same instinct with him: put a crowd in a real place, keep the camera moving, and let the scale do the arguing.
