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Barbet Schroeder, born in Tehran in 1941, has been making provocative films for over thirty years. Starting off in the midst of the creative ferment of the French New Wave, Schroeder has traveled the world to shoot challenging, often confrontational movies, he has produced the work of other major directors (Wenders, Rohmer, Godard, Rivette, Fassbinder); and he has consistently explored his own directorial vision in a wide range of commercially successful feature motion pictures, both in the United States and abroad.

For his work on Reversal of Fortune (1990), starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close, Schroeder was nominated for both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award as Best Director. His other American feature credits include Barfly, written by Charles Bukowski and starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway; Single White Female, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda; Kiss of Death, starring David Caruso, Nicholas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson; Before and After, starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson; and Desperate Measures, starring Andy Garcia and Michael Keaton.

Schroeder founded his film production company, Les Films du Losange, in 1963 at the age of twenty-two in Paris. The company's initial efforts were the first two installments of renowned director Eric Robmer's Moral Tales. Schroeder continued on to be producer on the whole series, including such famous works as My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. Other productions of Les Film du Losange comprise a whole festival of significant modern European cinema: Wim Wender's An American Friend, Jean Eustache's The Mother and The Whore, Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating, and films by Marguerite Dumas, Rainer Werne Fassbinder and Jean Luc Godard.

In 1968 Schroeder's first film as a feature director was More. In a partnership with actress Bulle Ogier, he went on to make The Valley Obscured by Clouds, Maitresse, and Tricheurs. His documentary portrait of the dictator Idi Amin Dada created a sensation. His 1978 film on Koko the Talking Gorilla explored the miracle of language, and the possibility that it extends past the boundaries of the human race.

Barbet Schroeder has also appeared as an actor in films such as Celine and Julie Go Boating, Patrice Chereau's Queen Margot and Tim Burton's Mars Attacks.

In 2001, Schroeder produced and directed the acclaimed Our Lady of the Assassins representing Columbia in the Oscar competition.