Riad Sattouf (Arabic: رياض سطوف; born 5 May 1978) is a French cartoonist, comic artist, and film director. Sattouf is best known for his award-winning graphic memoir hexalogy L'Arabe du futur (The Arab of the Future) and for his award-winning film Les Beaux Gosses (The French Kissers). He also worked for the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo for ten years, from 2004 to mid-2014, publishing drawing boards of one of his major works La vie secrète des jeunes. Riad Sattouf was born in Paris, to a Syrian father and French mother, and spent his childhood in Libya and Syria, then returned to France to spend his teenage years in Brittany, studying in Rennes. An avid reader of cartoon books and periodicals, sent to him by his grandmother, he was fascinated by them. Although he was studying to become a pilot, he applied to study at École Pivaut and then Gobelins L'Ecole de L'Image to study animation. The famous cartoonist Olivier Vatine noticed his talent and introduced him to Guy Delcourt, the owner of Delcourt, a publisher specializing in cartoons. Delcourt published Sattouf's first book Petit Verglas based on a story line by Éric Corbeyran. In a unique personal and humorous style, he narrated his own adolescent life observations in Manuel du puceau and Ma Circoncision published by Bréal Jeunesse Publishing House owned by Joann Sfar. The books were later reprinted by L'Association Publishing House. In Ma circoncision, he denounced circumcision as a cruel and absurd act, superimposed on the context of the socio-political life in his ancestral Syria in the 1980s. He then published the Jérémie series in the cartoon collection Poisson Pilote published by Dargaud, resulting in three books of the series. Jérémie is the story of a young sentimental and unstable youth growing to adulthood and is very autobiographical. It also appeared in No sex in New York in 2004 on the initiative of the French left-wing daily Libération. In 2005 he published Retour au collège, an observational study of adolescents in a Parisian middle school, which was a big success. Meanwhile, Sattouf developed the fictional character Pascal Brutal, an embodiment of pure virility. The comedic Pascal Brutal series imagines France of the near-future as an anarchic, neoliberal dystopia where the hero's outlandish machismo is given free rein. From 2004 to 2014, he published a weekly strip in the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo entitled "La vie secrète des jeunes", recounting anecdotal observations of young people in public places. He likened the strip to a fly-on-the-wall nature documentary, and rendered the speech of his subjects with careful attention to sociolinguistic variation. The strips have been republished in three volumes, one in 2007, the second in 2010 and the last one in 2013. In late 2014, he left Charlie Hebdo and moved to Le Nouvel Obs, a weekly magazine, with a new strip called Les cahiers d'Esther (Esther's notebooks), based on true stories told to him by Esther A., a girl who was 9 years old when the strip started. Sattouf also experimented with film dubbing by giving his voice to a cartoon character in Petit Vampire designed by his friend, cartoonist Joann Sfar. ... Source: Article "Riad Sattouf" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Biography from TMDB.
- May 5, 1978 (48)
- Paris, France
- Director, writer, composer and producer
- 7 on MovieCove · 15 credits in all
Known for
What are Riad Sattouf's films like?
Across a limited sample of 4 MovieCove titles with a thematic analysis, their films lean Bonds and Self.
What they feel like to watch
Ironic 1 · Wry 0 · Earnest 3
A split, not a type: Light 2 · Serious 1 · Dark 1
A split, not a type: Grounded 2 · Stylized 0 · Heightened 2
Gentle 1 · Charged 2 · Intense 1
Steady 2 · Shifting 2 · Whiplash 0
Straight-faced 1 · Some laughs 2 · Funny 1
Slow burn 4 · Even-paced 0 · Relentless 0
Casual 3 · Engaged 1 · Full focus 0
A split, not a type: Easy watch 2 · Affecting 1 · Heavy 1
Resolved 3 · Open-ended 1 · Ambiguous 0
Moods and endings
AI-generated from each title's plot synopsis and cast list, with extra plot summaries, reviews and Parents Guide notes for titles the model may not know, and the model's own knowledge of the ones it recognizes. Only analyzed titles count, so this covers part of the filmography; the feel axes count films only for now.
Where can I watch Riad Sattouf's films?
As of October 24, 2026, 4 of their 7 MovieCove titles stream on a subscription or free service, most on Tubi (3).
Subscription and free streaming for Riad Sattouf's titles on MovieCove; rent and buy are not counted. Titles are listed by Midcredits score, highest first, at most 12 per service; a dashed chip is a producer credit or a minor one, such as a thanks. A service opens the browse page, which counts movies only, so its number can differ.
Filmography
15 credits, 7 with a MovieCove page; 6 appearances as themselves are hidden until asked for.
Midcredits score: 88th percentile of all films
40 (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(2024)
Le Figaro La Nuit (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(2022)
Un monde, un regard (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(2021)
Esther's Notebooks (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(2018)
Godard Mon Amour(2017)
Midcredits score: 62nd percentile of all films
Vengeance et terre battue (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(2014)
Midcredits score: 51st percentile of all films
Camille Rewinds(2012)
Midcredits score: 55th percentile of all films
The Artist(2011)
Midcredits score: 96th percentile of all films
Declaration of War(2011)
Midcredits score: 80th percentile of all films
The French Kissers(2009)
Midcredits score: 59th percentile of all films
Little Vampire (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(2004)
Le Grand départ (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)
Les Cahiers d’Esther (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)
Career shape
A full career of 15 titles, 13 of them dated from 2004 to 2024.
Film career
- 2011Screen debut· Declaration of War
How do Riad Sattouf's films land?
Their typical MovieCove film has a Midcredits score in the 62nd percentile, the median of all 7; across a limited sample of 4 films with reception data, the typical film sits in the 57th percentile for acclaim.
- 75th and up3
- 50th to 74th4
Shape of the crowd
None of their 7 titles divides audiences: 4 are Crowd Pleasers.
- Universally Loved1
- Crowd Pleaser4
- Broadly Agreed1
- Mixed1
Reviewers score the atmosphere 75/100 and the pacing 54/100 in their films, across 4 reviewed titles. The element that speaks to their work as a director.
Percentiles are each film's standing among all films on MovieCove; the typical film is the median, so one outlier cannot drag it. Percentiles and reviewer scores count the films IMDb credits them on, for now; the Midcredits score bands, the shape of the crowd and the two cards count their MovieCove titles, shows included (a show ranked among shows), appearances as themselves left out. A descriptor is the shape of a title's IMDb rating distribution against the catalog; "most divisive" needs a spread wider than half of all titles, and a card names only a principal credit: a craft role, and on a show a crew role or a run of episodes, never a courtesy credit or a one-off guest spot.
Who does Riad Sattouf work with?
People who share at least 2 of Riad Sattouf's MovieCove titles, grouped by what they did on them; Michel Hazanavicius shares the most, 3.
Directors
- Michel HazanaviciusShared titles: The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024), Godard Mon Amour (2017), Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014)See all 3 shared titles with Michel Hazanavicius
Actors
- Grégory GadeboisShared titles: The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024), Godard Mon Amour (2017)See all 2 shared titles with Grégory Gadebois
- Anthony SonigoShared titles: Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014), The French Kissers (2009)See all 2 shared titles with Anthony Sonigo
- Noémie LvovskyShared titles: Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014), The French Kissers (2009)See all 2 shared titles with Noémie Lvovsky
- Vincent LacosteShared titles: Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014), The French Kissers (2009)See all 2 shared titles with Vincent Lacoste
Editors
- Virginie BruantShared titles: Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014), The French Kissers (2009)See all 2 shared titles with Virginie Bruant
Producers
- Florence GastaudShared titles: The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024), Godard Mon Amour (2017)See all 2 shared titles with Florence Gastaud
- Anne-Dominique ToussaintShared titles: Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014), The French Kissers (2009)See all 2 shared titles with Anne-Dominique Toussaint
- Romain Le GrandShared titles: Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (2014), The French Kissers (2009)See all 2 shared titles with Romain Le Grand
