Radu Mihaileanu was born in Bucharest in 1958. To escape the dictatorship established in his country by the leader Ceausescu, he moved first to Israel and then to France where he studied film. They allow him to start his career as an editor, then as an assistant director with Marco Ferreri, among others. He then directed his first feature film, entitled Trahir, which was released in 1993 and a second, Train de vie, awarded at the Venice Film Festival in 1998, which brought him international recognition.

The filmmaker, marked by his history, develops in his films themes that are dear to him such as exile and identity. He summoned actors Roschdy Zem and Yael Abecassis to the casting of his third film Vas, Vis et Deviens, which retraces the story of Ethiopian Jews sent to Israel in the 80s. With this film, he won the Cesar Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2006. Then came The Concert, released in 2009, which was a huge success in theaters with nearly 2 million viewers. The film evokes the rather crazy dream of a fallen Russian conductor wishing to bring his old Bolshoi troupe to a concert in Paris in place of the new troupe.

Finally, in 2011, Radu Mihaileanu directed The Women's Source, which deals with the demands of a group of women in the Maghreb, eager to see their daily tasks shared by men. In May 2015, the filmmaker embarks on the production of a new feature film The Story of Love, this time in English, an adaptation of Nicole Krauss's eponymous novel.