Jean-Charles Tacchella (born 23 September 1925) is a French screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his film Cousin Cousine (1975), which was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and which was later (1989) remade in a US version starring Ted Danson and titled Cousins.

Jean-Charles Tacchella studied in Marseilles and, just after the Liberation, left for Paris with the aim of becoming a film director. He joined L'écran Français when he was nineteen where he worked with Renoir, Becker and Grémillon. While with the magazine, he wrote about filmmakers, actors, films and met André Bazin, Nino Frank, Roger Leenhardt, Roger Thérond and Alexandre Astruc. He became friends with Erich Von Stroheim, Anna Magnani, Vittorio de Sica and created the monthly “Ciné Digest” with Henri Colpi. In 1948, Tacchella, along with Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Astruc, Claude Mauriac, René Clément and Pierre Kast, established Objectif 49, an avant-garde film club whose president was Jean Cocteau. Objectif 49 became the birthplace of the New Wave.