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Claire Denis

Denis was born in Paris in 1946, but raised in colonial French Africa, where her father was a civil servant, living in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, French Somaliland, and Senegal. Her childhood spent living in West Africa with her parents and her younger sister would color her perspectives on certain political issues. It has been a strong influence on her films, which have dealt with themes of colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa. Her father moved with the family every two years because he wanted the children to learn about geography. When Denis was 14 years old, she moved with her mother and sister to a Parisian suburb in France, a country that she hardly knew at all. Her parents wanted their children to finish their education in France.


She studied at the IDHEC, the French film school, with the encouragement of her husband. He told her she needed to figure out what she wanted to do. She graduated from the IDHEC and, since 2002, has been a Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Her debut feature film Chocolat (1988), a semi-autobiographical meditation on African colonialism, won her critical acclaim. It was selected for the Cannes Film Festival and was praised by critics and audiences alike as a remarkable first film. With films such as US Go Home (1994), Nénette et Boni (1996), Beau Travail (1999), set in Africa; Trouble Every Day (2001), and Vendredi soir (2002), she established a reputation as a filmmaker who "has been able to reconcile the lyricism of French cinema with the impulse to capture the often harsh face of contemporary France." She returned to Africa again with White Material (2009), set in an unidentified country during a time of civil war.


Her collaboration goes beyond her own films, as she has appeared in other directors' films, such as Laetitia Masson's En avoir (1995) and Tonie Marshall's Vénus beauté (1999). She shares screenwriting credit with Yousry Nasrallah for his film El Medina (2000). She also worked as an assistant director with Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987), and with Jim Jarmusch on Down by Law (1986). In 2005 she was a member of the jury at the 27th Moscow International Film Festival. Her 2013 film Bastards was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. In 2013 she was awarded Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award at the Stockholm Film Festival.


Denis announced in 2015 that she was partnering with Zadie Smith for her English-language debut film, High Life. In August of that year she announced that Robert Pattinson had been cast as the lead. High Life comes out later this year, in 2018. Her film Let the Sunshine In premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, and was released in theaters April 27th, 2017.


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