Pierre-Olivier Faïs

A successful playwright reflects on his journey from his Armenian roots to adapting in France, forty years after his family's move to Marseilles. He now goes by a new name to fit in better with French society.

Henri Verneuil was born Achod Malakian of Armenian parentage on October 15, 1920, in Rodosto, Turkey, and his family fled to France and settled in Marseilles when he was a young child. He later recounted his childhood experience in the novel Mayrig, which he dedicated to his mother and made into this 1991 film with the same name.