20th-century French non-fiction writers

Jean-Pierre_Denis

Jean-Pierre Denis (born 29 March 1946) is a French film director and screenwriter. He has directed seven films since 1980. His directorial debut Adrien's Story won the Caméra d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. His film Field of Honor was entered into the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.

Robert_Antelme

Robert Antelme (5 January 1917, Sartène, Corse-du-Sud – 26 October 1990) was a French writer. During the Second World War he was involved in the French Resistance and deported.
In 1939 he married Marguerite Duras. Their child died at birth in 1942. In the same year, Duras met Dionys Mascolo, who became her lover.

Antelme was arrested and deported on 1 July 1944. He was at Buchenwald, then Gandersheim. After the end of the war François Mitterrand found Antelme in a terrible state while visiting the Dachau concentration camp and organised his return to Paris; Mitterrand later reported that he had almost not heard Antelme's soft-voiced call to him. Marguerite Duras looked after Antelme and wrote La Douleur about his return. She divorced him soon after he regained his health, but they remained friends.

Nicolas_Vanier

Nicolas Vanier (born 5 May 1962) is a French adventurer, writer and director.
His 2004 film The Last Trapper follows a trapper in Yukon, Canada.
His film, Loup ("Wolf") was released at the end of 2009 and was presented at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Loup is about the life of the Evens tribe in North Eastern arctic Siberia, in the Verkhoïansk mountain range, who live by raising large herds of reindeer (caribou), which involves protecting them from attacks by wolves.
In 2018, France Nature Environnement formally complained that a film crew overseen by Vanier had disturbed a colony of Greater Flamingoes, by repeatedly flying over them in an ultra-light aircraft, causing many - an estimated 11% of the total breeding population in France - to desert their nests and eggs.

Gaston_Paris

Bruno Paulin Gaston Paris (French pronunciation: [ɡastɔ̃ paʁis]; 9 August 1839 – 5 March 1903) was a French literary historian, philologist, and scholar specialized in Romance studies and medieval French literature. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, 1902, and 1903.

Luc_Dietrich

Raoul-Jacques Dietrich, better known as Luc Dietrich (17 March 1913, Dijon – 12 August 1944), was a French writer.
Dietrich was born in Dijon. His father died when he was very young, and his mother was ill and addicted to drugs. She was frequently incapable of taking care of her son; several times he was sent asylums and similar establishments. Shortly after Dietrich's release from one at the age of 18, his mother died.
In 1932 Dietrich met philosopher and poet Lanza del Vasto at the Parc Monceau in Paris. The first thing del Vasto said to Dietrich was "Are you as good as this bread?" The two became inseparable friends for the rest of Dietrich's short life. Lanza helped and mentored Dietrich in writing, although he always refused to be credited as a co-author. Another of Dietrich's famous friends was poet René Daumal. After becoming lightly wounded during a bombardment in 1944, Dietrich developed hemiplegia and then gangrene, and died the same year, aged 31.
He is best known today for his semi-autobiographical novel, Le Bonheur des tristes ("The Happiness of Sad People").