Frédéric Mitterrand

In turn teacher, Olympic cinema operator, television host and producer, columnist and writer, he has directed numerous documentaries and feature films, including Love Letters in Somalia (1981) and Madame Butterfly (1995). Appointed director of the French Academy in Rome (Villa Medici) in 2008, he left his position in June 2009 to accept the post of Minister of Culture and Communication, which he held until May 2012. After La Mauvaise Vie (2005, Prix Le Vaudeville) and Le Festival de Cannes (2007), he published, in November 2013 at the same Éditions Robert Laffont, La Récréation, a diary of his years spent on the rue de Valois and a chronicle of the backstage of power, which met with immediate success and earned him the Prix du Livre politique 2014. With Une adolescence, chronicle of a childhood in the 1960s published in March 2015, Frédéric Mitterrand succeeds in combining two literary veins that are dear to him: that of the intimate author as well as that of the memoirist.