Laurent Bénégui

After training for seven years at the university hospital at Lariboisiére-St Louis, Laurent Bénégui realized he wanted to be a novelist not a doctor and published the first of his eight books in 1989. Within two years, he had made his debut as a writer/director with the comedy "Un Type bien" and then went on to adapt his own novel "Au Petit Marguery" for Stéphane Audran and Michel Aumont, as well as directing Monica Bellucci and Jacques Gamblin in the romcom "Mauvais Genre" and Thierry Lhermitte and Elsa Zylberstein in the comedy thriller "Loser Takes All!" In 1993, having directed the short "Mireille et Barnabé aimeraient bien en avoir un...," Bénegui launched Magouric Productions and has since produced (and occasionally acted in) numerous shorts and features. Most notably, he wrote and produced pictures for directors Jean-Paul Salomé ("Crimes et jardins" and "Les Braqueuses") and Agnés Obadia ("Romaine" and "Romaine 30° Below"). He also produced Obadia and Jean-Julien Chervier's 2000 teen movie "Du Poil sous les roses" and collaborated with director Jacques Maillot on the ensemble woman's picture "Nos Vies heureuses," the TV movie "Froid comme l'été" and the hit crime drama "Rivals," which starred Guillaume Canet and François Cluzet as brothers on opposite sides of the law. In 2011, Bénégui moved back behind the camera for the small-screen musical comedy "La Véritable histoire de Blanche Neige."