Rosiignon was born in 1959 to a farming family from the north of France. After
spending several years in medical electronics, Christophe Rossignon pursued
interdisciplinary engineering studies.

Because of his passion for movies, he chose feature film financing and production as
his dissertation topic.

During this period, he met producers Alain Rocca and Adelind Lecallier, who asked
him to take over the short film production arm of their company LAZENNEC.
Rossignon formed LAZENNEC TOUT COURT, and produced ten shorts in his first
year of activity. Shortly after, he produced his first feature and became the third
partner of PRODUCTIONS LAZENNEC.

Having produced their short films, Rossignon developed privileged professional
rapports with Tran Anh Hung and Mathieu Kassovitz, and went on to produce their
first features, The Scent of Green Papaya and Metisse (Cafe au Lait) respectively.
Both were released in 1993. He has now produced their second films, Cyclo (The
Rickshaw boy) and La Haine (Hate), both of which will be released in the course of
this year.

TALKING WITH Christophe Rossignon

HOW DID YOU MEET MATHIEU ?

It's almost like a fairy tale. My first week at Lazennec where Alain Rocca and Adeline
Lecallier had called me in to work on "Lazennec Tout Court" (=Lazennec For Short), I
see this guy walk into my office, saying: "Can I come in with my bike?" I ask him
why, and he says: "Because I wanted to see you. I hear you produce shorts for
Lazennec."- "Yes, but what about the bike?" -"I don't want to leave it outside,
somebody might steal it." I say O.K., he comes in, he's wearing this cap and his
basketball shoes, it's Mathieu. "I've begun to work on this thing," he says to me. "It's
called "FIERROT LE POU" (Fierrot the Louse, from "PIERROT LE FOU",
Belmondo, Godard, etc.. untranslatable play on words) "I already have the rushes, I
can show them to you if you like, but I don't have the money to finish it. Do you want
to help me?" So there you have it.

He's the first movie director I ever met. Mathieu and I really started out together
because "FIERROT LE POU" was the first short that we did, i.e. our first real
experience in the movies. That's a very strong bond between us.

AND THEN ?

After that, we made two other shorts together: "CAUCHEMAR BLANC" (White
Nightmare), adapted from a comics strip by Moebius, and "ASSASSINS", and then
"METISSE" (Half-Breed), our first full-length picture. After "HATE" (La Haine),
I'm going to produce Mathieu's third film entitled "ASSASSINS", like his third short.

YOU'VE BECOME INSEPARABLE !

You know the expression: "You don't change winning horses." Mathieu and I know
each other well now. We've developed a real feeling of mutual trust and of profound
respect for our respective roles in the creative process and the making of a picture.

HAS "HATE" (La Haine) CHANGED YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE FRENCH
SUBURBS ?

I see them in a completely different way now. My parents were farmers. I come from
the North of France, a rural area where the notion of suburban ghettos doesn't exist.
And ever since I left my place of birth, I've been living in Paris. So my vision of the
suburbs was conditioned by the media. I think that now, my feelings about them can
be summed up by the catch line that we used for the poster: "Everything's just fine, so
far..."

ARE YOU A HAPPY PRODUCER ?

I'm 35, I've only been in this business five years (before that, I worked as an engineer
for SIEMENS). I've produced four pictures so far. With one of them, "L'ODEUR
DE LA PAPAYA VERTE" (=The scent of green papaya) directed by Tran Anh
Hung, I was lucky enough to go to Hollywood for the Oscars. I work with two
directors- Mathieu and Hung -with whom I get along marvelously well and whom I
have "12000" projects with. And on top of it all, I'm one of the three associate producers of LAZENNEC, which
is in the process of becoming the first mini-studio "a la francaise". This will enable me
to work even better on the production aspect of my pictures. So I'll just let you answer
the question yourself!