Jean-Pierre Jeunet has always written his own films, most of them completely original ideas, and he has collaborated with Guillaume Laurant on all them since City of Lost Children, with the exception of Alien: Resurrection. Laurant must have been scared away by the xenomorph. Or Winona Ryder.

Jeunet's first feature film was Delicatessen (1991), a weird and whimsical film about a landlord who butchers people to feed his tenants. Since then, Jeunet has always dabbled in weird and whimsical, whether it's City of Lost Children (1995), about a dream-stealing scientist, or The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013), about a boy who loves maps.

Jeunet's films, including Amélie, are often wholly original, but some, like Spivet and A Very Long Engagement (2004), are adaptations of equally weird and whimsical books. And although Amélie didn't win any Academy Awards, it's one of the writer-director's best-loved films.