Death of Tony Gatlif, the director of Gadjo Dilo

The two-César and Cannes-award-winning filmmaker died of a health problem. He was 77 years old.

French director Tony Gatlif, champion of gypsy culture and author of Gadjo Dilodied Wednesday September 2 at the age of 77, his family announced to Agence France-Presse Friday September 4. The filmmaker died in Arles, in Bouches-du-Rhône, from a health problem while he was still working on a historical film project.

In a press release, his wife, his children and his grandchildren greet “his generosity, his joy, his poetry and his love of music” and wish him “Latcho Drom”a gypsy expression meaning “Have a good trip”, in a nod to his film of the same name, released in 1993.

Born Boualem Dahmani on September 10, 1948 in Algiers, to a Kabyle father and a Gypsy mother, he grew up in Algeria before arriving in France in the early 1960s. He changed his name at the age of 12 to Tony Gatlif in order to avoid being sent back to Algeria. Shortly after, he discovered theater and met Michel Simon, then directed his first feature film, The Ruined Headin 1975.

With The Princes (1983), directed by Gérard Darmon, who made his first major film around the gypsy community, followed a decade later by Gadjo Dilo (1997). Led by Romain Duris and Rona Hartner, this ode to fraternity becomes his most famous work, following in the footsteps of a young Frenchman who travels on foot through Romania in search of an unknown singer and meets an old Roma musician named Izidor. Gadjo Dilo or “the mad stranger” is constructed as a road movie homage to gypsy music which fully participates in the narration.

This central place given to music becomes one of Gatlif’s signatures. Gadjo Dilo earned him the César for best music in 1999, an award he received again two years later for Vengo. In 2004, he took a new step with Exilespresented in official competition at Cannes, where it won the Best Director Prize.

Throughout his career, Swing has Freedomof Geronimo has Djamthe director will have thus thought of a work crossed by the same obsessions: exile, freedom, marginalized peoples, multiple identities and music. A deeply autobiographical cinema, like his penultimate film, Tom Medina (2021), the story of a young delinquent seeking to rebuild his life in the Camargue, notably echoed his own youth.

His latest feature film, Angelwas released in 2025.