Former French Gangster Turned Film and Theater Director, Novelist, and Screenwriter Frank Henry’s Inspiring Story of Redemption

The Frenchman today is a writer and director of film and theater.

Photo: Wikimedia

Film and theater director, novelist and screenwriter Frank Henry says that this has been his best “coup”: winning the audience’s applause. His nickname, during his days as a thief, was “Frankus the Gunsmith,” because he liked heavy-caliber weapons. Now his desire is to convince, with the finest arguments at his disposal, that crime is no worthwhile adventure.

“Banditry has always fascinated people: authors, playwrights, directors, spectators… I want to break with that kind of romanticism and aestheticism around the gangster. “There is nothing glamorous about banditry!” confesses this man with a shaved head and penetrating blue gaze.

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“I want to demystify it. I know that life is not fun at all. The gangsters hug each other at noon and shoot each other at night… The main cause of mortality among bandits is not the police: it is the criminals themselves who kill each other,” adds Henry, who is almost 64 years old.

“I have paid dearly, very dearly… All of that is behind me,” says this former specialist in bank and casino robberies. Although he emphasizes that he has “no blood on his hands,” Frank Henry admits that he was able to traumatize people for life by mugging them. The former gangster even says he gives lessons today “to former colleagues”: “I tell them to stop boasting. “What we did is not right.”

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The turning point, he says, was the late birth of his son, Lucas. This was explained during his last trial, in 2014, when he appeared accused of recidivism, after robberies of exchange offices or trucks transporting computer equipment.

“For the first time I had the feeling that I had made the wrong life. I fooled people, that’s all I did, I lived on fury and blood. All this for what…? “I don’t want to leave crime as an inheritance to my son,” Henry declared during his trial, in which he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Throughout his periods of detention, starting in the 1990s, he chose to take refuge in studies, until he obtained a master’s degree in musicology and wrote several novels. The French publishing house Éditions du Cherche Midi even entrusted him with the direction of a collection once it was released. “I didn’t know I could write. “A real luck!”, he acknowledges.

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Between two novels he wrote numerous scripts for television series. He also collaborated with film director Cédric Klapisch for the film “Neither for nor against (but quite the opposite)” in 2003.

In 2011 he managed to direct his first film, “De Force”, for which he featured stars such as Isabelle Adjani, Thierry Frémont and Eric Cantona. “I am neither proud nor ashamed, because I have paid my debt to society. To a boy tempted by crime I would explain that there is no such thing as a worthy gangster. You are a disgrace to the people who love you and to yourself. And the minimum is that you get a ten-year sentence,” he lists.

Frank Henry is aware that in the eyes of the police he is still a gangster. In fact, on the opening night of his solo show he was able to identify police officers from the intelligence services in the audience.

2024-02-06 03:15:16
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