Jowan Le Besco is a French actor, scriptwriter, director and chief cameraman. He is the second child in a family of five. His mother is actress and journalist, Catherine Belkhodja of French and Algerian ancestry, while his father is of Breton and Vietnamese descent. He has worked on many occasions with his brother and sisters, with whom he collaborates on a regular basis as chief cameraman. He has video captured the live theatre performance of Pois chiche by Maïwenn Le Besco, one of his sisters, also an actress and director, twice nominated for a César Award in 2007 for her first film Pardonnez-moi. He also played with his sister Isild Le Besco in , a film featuring Catherine Deneuve. He was chief cameraman in two films written and directed by Isild: Demi-tarif, produced by their sister Leonor Graser and independent French filmproduction companyKaredas, featuring their younger brotherKolia Litscher in a main role, and Charly, also produced by Isild, on which he collaborated again with Isild and Kolia.
Career
A former pupil of Lycée Charlemagne and Lycée Victor Hugo in Paris, two secondary schools renowned for their academic excellence, Jowan started cinema studies at the Paris Sorbonne University of Jussieu, during which he directed a large number of short films. An award received for one of his short films won him editing software, which he used in a number of music video clips. He then decided to further his studies at the Lyon Institut Lumière and Paris Gobelins School. He took part in Isild’s first short film produced by SOPADIN, and went on by taking charge of photography in Demi-tarif, which won an award for best Junior script. Given their young age - both were under 20, Jowan and Isild had experienced the greatest difficulty finding a producer for this project. KAREDAS decided to trust them: as a result, the film was presented at over fifty festivals and widely acclaimed by film critics. Even though he has occasionally held roles as an actor, Jowan’s objective has always been to stick to film photography training. To this end, he studied with Stéphane Marty, later with Caroline Champetier during the making of L'Intouchable, shot in India where he was in charge of capturing the cremation scenes. With the success of Demi-tarif, he was able to prepare Isild’s second film Charly with greater ease, as the project was funded by an advance on future box-office receipts from the CNC, as well as receiving the support of Arte.The film is to be released on 12 September 2007. Following an extended solitary stay in an Indian monastery, he brought back Yapo, a documentary that was selected for the 29th Cinéma du Réel Documentary Festival, a yearly event for ethnological or social documentary films organised by the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
