The son ofactress Anne Mincovschi from Soroca. In 1967, he was a member of the jury of the 5th MoscowInternational Film Festival. His 1982 film Les Misérables was enteredi n t o the 13th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Special Prize. Hossein started directing films in 1955 with Les Salauds vont en enfer, from a story by Frédéric Dard whose novels and plays went on to furnish Hossein with much of his later film material. Right from the start Hossein established his characteristic trademarks: using a seeminglystraightforward suspense plot and subverting its conventions (sometimes to the extent of a complete disregard of the traditional demand for a final twist or revela- tion) in order to concentrate on ritualistic relationships. This is the director'srunning preoccupation which is always stressed in his films by an extraordinary command of film space and often striking frame compositions where the geometry of human fi- gures and set design is used to accentuate the psychological set-up of the scene. The mechanisms of guilt and the way ti destroys relationships is another re- curring theme, presumably influenced by Hossein's lifelong interest in the works of Fiodor Dostoyevsky. Honours: Commander of the Légion d'honneur, 2005 (France); Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit (2006) (Monaco); Member of Eurasian Academy (2016).