Olivier Ayache-Vidal

Olivier Ayache-Vidal (born 27 December 1969) is a French film director and screenwriter. After studying social sciences and communications, he worked as a creative in an advertisement agency. He became a photographic reporter in 1992, doing missions for the UNESCO and travelling the world for the Gamma agency. In five years, he did thirty pieces in fifteen countries. His career in journalism shaped a working method that he would later apply in his fictional works. His stories are preceded by extensive research, which allows him to write stories that are as close to reality as possible. This vision of cinema, a "lived-in filmmaking" of sorts, aims to create fictional stories that are as documented as possible. Often tragicomical, his films present stories that are inspired by reality, with often non-professional actors. The objective is to blur the frontier between our world and the fictional realm. He applied this method for the first time in 1997, with his first comic script: Fox One – Armageddon. To create this comic series, he attended the Red Flag Air Force Exercise at the Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada, visited the Charles de Gaulle, Foch and Clemenceau aircraft carriers during high seas exercises, and visited French Air Force Bases. The Fox One series was translated in five languages and sold over 90 000 copies. In 2002, he directed his first short film, Undercover, a seven-minute presentation which mixed cinema and a live show; it won multiple international awar…