Director · Actor · Writer · Producer

Ladj Ly

17 credited titles on WatchWise

Ladj Ly (born 19 March 1980 in Paris) is a French film director and screenwriter. He won a Jury Prize in Cannes Film Festival for Les Misérables in 2019. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Ly's parents are from Mali and he grew up in Montfermeil, a district of Bosquets. He started making films with his friends Kim Chapiron, Romain Gavras, and JR, in the collective Kourtrajmé. He directed his first films, notably for Oxmo Puccino, and his first documentaries, 365 jours à Clichy-Montfermeil (365 days in Clichy-Montfermeil), filmed after the 2005 French riots; Go Fast Connexion; and 365 jours au Mali (365 days in Mali). In 2011, Ly was given a three-year prison sentence for kidnapping and false imprisonment. In 2012, the sentence was reduced on appeal to two years imprisonment, and one year suspended sentence. Les Misérables is the first non-documentary film he directed. The film received many awards, notably at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and a nomination for the César Award for Best Short Film in 2018. In the same year, he was nominated for the César Award for Best Documentary Film for À voix haute: La Force de la parol

Associated lifetime gross

$57M

Combined reported budget

$5.0M

Gross / budget

11.2x

Bankability Index

68 / 100

Associated performance by genre

Worldwide gross by tagged contribution — US$.

Drama

$56M · 2 films · 50% hit

Comedy

$360K · 1 film · 0% hit

Bankability assessment

68/100Commercially reliable collaborator

Films measured × gross-vs-budget efficiency, weighted by billing prominence — lead roles and directing count fully, minor roles fractionally. Association, not attribution — not a claim that this individual caused the revenue.

Filmography cards

Each title carries role, budget, worldwide gross and commercial verdict.

Based on 3 of 11 catalogued titles with reported budget and worldwide gross — figures from TMDB and Wikipedia (reused under CC BY-SA), shown in US$. Coverage varies by title; figures are estimates, not audited trade data.