Laetitia Colombani

Laetitia Colombani was born in 1976 in the Caudéran quartier of Bordeaux. She then lived in Talence and Gradignan. Her father is a construction engineer. Her mother was a librarian at the Collège de Monjous, where she was a student. She earned a baccalauréat at the Lycée Victor Louis. At age 18, she moved to Nantes to complete a two-year preparatory class at the Ciné-Sup. She then entered the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière, from which she received her diploma in 1998. Colombani's film career began with several short films, including Le Dernier bip (1998) and Mémoire de puce (1999). She made her feature directorial debut with He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not (2002), starring Audrey Tautou. She also directed the comedy Mes stars et moi (2008), starring Kad Merad, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart and Mélanie Bernier.

As an author, Colombani received international attention in 2017 with her first novel, The Braid (La Tresse), for which she received several awards and sold 2 million copies in France. It tells the story of three women with very different destinies, living in India, Sicily and Canada. Colombani herself adapted the novel into the film The Braid (2023), which she also directed. The film was a major success in France, where it sold 1.3 million admissions. Her second novel Les Victorieuses was released in 2019. Her third novel, Le Cerf-volant, followed in 2021.