Governance
DIRECTION
Mr. Axel Duroux
Chief Executive Officer
Born in Lyon, France, Axel Duroux is of French-Swiss nationality. He holds a master's degree in International Law and a PhD degree in Political Science. He is also a graduate of the French Press Institute. Axel Duroux began his career as a photojournalist, then television news reporter and host, before heading the press department of IBM France. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Endemol Development and Senior Vice President of Endemol France from 2000 to 2004. He was also Chief Executive Officer of RTL Radio (France) from 2004 to 2009 and served as Managing Director of TF1 Group (formerly Television Française 1) until October 2009. Then he was Executive Vice-President of Publicis Group, responsible for emerging and fast-growing markets from 2014 to 2017. Since 2017, Axel Duroux was a Senior Partner and Head of the Paris office of Brunswick Group. He was Chairman (from 2017 to 2019) and member of the Supervisory Board of EuroDisney (from 2013 to 2019). He served as a director of the INA (French National Audiovisual Institute) and Stereopictures SPK (Korea). He also served as a member of the Supervisory Board at M6 (Metropole Television M6) from 2007 to 2009.
Mr. Luc Besson
Artistic Director
Luc Besson began his career as a producer and director in the early 1980s. He has directed seventeen feature-length films, including “Subway”, “The Big Blue”, “Nikita”, “Léon (The Professional)”, “The Fifth Element” (for which he won the César for best director in 1997), the animated trilogy “Arthur and the Invisibles”, “Lucy”, as well as “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”. Franchises of note include “Taken”, “Transporter” and “Taxi”. In May 2000, Luc Besson was president of the jury of Cannes International Film Festival, becoming the youngest jury president in the history of this festival. A César, BAFTA and Lumiere Award winning filmmaker, he was named International Producer of the year by The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. Films written and/or directed by Luc Besson have grossed more than $3.0 billion at the worldwide box office to date. He founded EuropaCorp in 1999.