Tony Gatlif, the French film director known as "cinema's Gypsy auteur" for his lifelong focus on Roma communities and music, has died aged 77. Between 1975 and 2025 he directed more than 20 films, struggling for years to secure funding and distribution before his 1993 breakthrough Latcho Drom, an arthouse hit that used music and imagery rather than narration to portray the historic migration of Roma peoples from Asia to western Europe.

Born Boualem Dahmani in Algiers to a Kabyle father and a mother of Spanish and Roma heritage, he grew up in poverty and relocated to southern France in 1960 amid the Algerian war of independence. A troubled youth who spent time in reform school, he adopted the name Tony Gatlif to evade police, before a chance meeting with actor Michel Simon led him into drama school and eventually filmmaking. His later works, including Gadjo Dilo (1997) and Exils (2004, which won him the best director award at Cannes), continued to explore Roma culture, discrimination and identity, with his final film, Ange, released in 2025.