Josée Dayan (born 6 October 1943 in Toulouse, France) is a French film director, screenwriter and producer. Dayan grew up in Algiers, Algeria, where her father Albert Dagnant, who came from a Jewish family, worked as a television director; her grandmother was the owner of a cinema. Since 1974 she directed mainly movies for television. In 1979, under her direction, a documentary about Simone de Beauvoir appeared. Her most successful works are the 1998 TV mini-series The Count of Monte Cristo wit ...