'This is my culture': French director on his 'urban' comedies 20 years ago he stepped onto a movie set as a dog-trainer. Now Franck Gastambide, a native of the Paris suburb of Melun, is about to take the prize for the French film that sold the most tickets abroad, "Taxi 5." The actor-writer-director talks about the resounding success of his first films and his passion for comedies about people like him. "My first film was made in the suburb I grew up in, 100 meters from the clinic in which I was born," he says, "I can’t make a film that’s more sincere than that." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES//REFILING TO CORRECT THE SPELLING OF "KAIRA"