Ziegfried 

France

They also placed the auteur filmmaker – who writes, directs, lenses, composes the music, and has a hand in the editing – prominently in the front lines of the young and innovative in current French cinema.

Don't let his mono-moniker throw you off track (if he was a Wagner buff, he'd spell it 'Siegfried'), nor the fact that he spent a decade at a conservatory and often shows up in Paris or New York with a tambour under his arm. 

Ziegfried is, first and foremost, a photographer and, with his finely honed camera-eye, a devout advocate of a new style of 'free spirit' cinema. 

For Louise (take 2), Ziegfried worked with a small crew of 15, shooting with a hand-held super-16 camera and without permits, where and when it pleased him. A strong believer in natural light over artificially lit location-shooting, he drew some startling effects from scenes filmed in metros and stations.

The technique appropriately fits the double-decker 'takes' in the story. 'Take 1,' or the first part of the film, deals with Louise's real life. 'Take 2' focuses on her dream world. 

The 20-year-old girl, who drifts through Paris like a blithe spirit and satisfies her dreams by shop-lifting at department stores, meets a clochard in the metro and listens to his story. 

When the tramp confesses a wish to see his eight-year-old son, who was born to a prostitute and sent to an orphanage because there was no one to take care of him, Louise goes to the orphanage and picks up the child, Gaby, on a pretext. 

She takes the boy on her rounds of the streets and the metro, deciding along the way that a meeting with the father is not the right decision. Then a boyfriend gets involved in the affair and things get even more complicated for Louise.
Ron Holloway