Born in 1948, in France, the son of actor Maurice Garrel. He made his first short film Lês Enfants Désaccordés in 1964. He was awarded the Jean Vigo Prize in 1982 for L`Enfant Secret (1979), the Silver Lion at the Venice Festival 1991 for I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar, and the FOPRESCI Prize at the same festival in 2001 for Sauvage Innocence. His film Les Regular Lovers (2004) earned him the Louis Delluc Prize and the Silver Lion in 2005.