Biography for
Djamel Bennecib More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

11 May 1981, Flers de l'Orne, France

Height

5' 9¾" (1.77 m)

Trivia

His favorite movies are Jaws (1975) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Jaws (1975) is the movie that inspired him to become a director.

Was an exchange student at the University of Connecticut in 2004.

Attended the University of Paris X-Nanterre receiving a B.A. in Cinema and Audiovisual media in 2004. Upon graduation, he moved to America and continued his studies at LACC in the Cinema/Television department, where he gained two years of directing and editing experience.

Doesn't speak Arabic even though his father is from Algeria.

Son of a French mother and an Algerian father, he grew up in Normandy, France.

Star-athlete Michael Jordan was the role model of his youth.

Personal Quotes

"Lost" is by far, the best show I've seen in the past 20 years... and it's actually a weird, offhanded influence in the way I've developed "The Great L.A. Pretenders" because we see characters interacting in such a way as if Hollywood were an island. For them, there is only this dream of Hollywood, and they will stop at nothing to realize it. Of course my technique in the way I choose to shoot it is always as cinematic as possible, like "Lost," you will see in webisode 4 which is called 'Drunk', I used an extreme close-up of Sherman's eye. If you pay attention to "Lost", almost every episode uses this close-up to focus the story line from an ensemble piece to one individual for that specific episode. For me...it is important to know my influences and pay respects to them, but at the same time, try to make them my own. But I cannot help that I love "Lost" immensely and many other great films like "Goodfellas" and Scorsese films in general. Everyone steals from everyone, but as long as it is polite stealing, it is flattering as opposed to pissing off the creators. About the wry, offbeat dialogue of "The Great L.A. Pretenders" you're talking about, if I had some American writing my show, we would miss a lot of the charm in my Raymond Queneau-esque perspective on life. So in this sense, we choose style over correctness. I mean, polite stealing is funny, no?

The future of entertainment is not television, as more and more people choose Internet over TV... I'm telling you right now: in 5 years, maybe 6, you will see shows as popular as "Lost" created for, and viewable only on the Internet.