Nikita director Luc Besson says he's finished with filmmaking
Last Updated: Monday, September 11, 2006 | 4:27 PM ET
CBC Arts
Luc Besson, the French director of The Big Blue, Nikita and The Fifth Element, says his latest movie will be his last.
The 47-year-old filmmaker said Monday he wants to devote himself to other personal projects, including a foundation to help young people in France's depressed inner cities.
"I want to take a little care of my fellow citizens. I want to take a little care of my planet. I want to act in favour of the inner cities, in favour of the environment. I want to do lots of things," he said.
Luc Besson, seen here at a film festival in China in June 2006, says he has directed his last film.
(Color China Photo/Associated Press)
Besson's 10th directorial effort, the animated Arthur et les Minimoys, opens in France this December.
"They are my 10 little babies," he told a French radio program. "I love them all. I am pleased to have completed this cycle. That is finished."
In a lengthy interview, Besson said he would cease creating movies but did not say if he will cut himself off completely from the business.
Besson was usually the producer and director of his films, which include 1994's Léon (The Professional) starring Natalie Portman and The Transporter in 2002.
He also wrote films such as The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc starring Milla Jovovich and most recently, Banlieu 13 ( District B13).
Banlieu 13 was released in Canada in August and hinted at Besson's concerns about deteriorating conditions in the suburbs of Paris.
Condemnation of political elites
The action flick is set in a Paris ghetto in the near future. It's become so lawless and run by drug lords that the government decides to cordon it off.
Although the plot surrounds an undercover cop who must go into the ghetto to recover a stolen missile, the ending is a condemnation of France's political elites and their treatment of the disadvantaged — a thinly veiled reference to the ethnically charged riots in Paris suburbs in 2005.
Born in Paris, Besson began his movie career in the 1980s, directing his first movie, The Last Battle, in 1983. Born to two scuba divers, he also made Atlantis, an underwater wildlife documentary, in 1991.
Besson hit it big with 1990's La Femme Nikita (known as Nikita in North America), starring Anne Parillaud as a vicious street urchin hired by a secret organization to become a contract killer.
IMDB.com lists five more projects Besson has produced that are due out in 2006 and 2007, including the Jodie Foster-directed Flora Plum.
