French filmmaker François Ozon was BOTD in 1967. Born in Paris to a middle-class family, he studied at the Sorbonne before attending La Femis film school. He turned heads with his 1998 debut feature Sitcom, a satire about a bourgeois family who descend into sexual degeneracy after adopting a white rat. His next film Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (Water Drops on Burning Rocks) was based on Reiner Werner Fassbinder’s play about a middle-aged man who becomes infatuated with a man 30 years his junior, followed by Sous le sable (Under the Sand), relaunching the film career of Charlotte Rampling. He became better known to international audiences with 8 femmes (8 Women), a comic murder mystery starring French cinema legends Catherine Deneuve, Fanny Ardant, Danielle Darrieux and Isabelle Huppert, featuring musical numbers, Dynasty-style bitch fights and a lesbian embrace. He reunited with Rampling for the lesbian-lite erotic thriller Swimming Pool, followed by 5×2, a harrowing portrait of a heterosexual marriage told in reverse, and Le Temps qui reste (The Time That Remains), a drama about a young gay photographer dealing with an unspecified terminal illness. He had a commercial success with 2010’s Potiche, an enjoyably silly comedy starring Deneuve as a tracksuit-wearing trophy wife who takes over her husband’s umbrella factory; Dans la maison (In the House), a domestic comedy starring Kristin Scott Thomas; and Une nouvelle amie (A New Girlfriend), a comedy about a woman who discovers her boyfriend is a transvestite. Ozon’s recent work includes the World War One-set drama Frantz; Grâce à Dieu (By the Grace of God), a drama about adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests; the coming-of-age drama Été 85 (Summer of 85); and Peter von Kant, a gay male version of Fassbinder’s film Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant). His latest film, an adaptation of Albert Camus’ novel L’Étranger (The Stranger), was released in 2025. Openly gay since forever, little is known about his personal life or relationships.