Claire Denis
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Masterclasses at Qumra 2024 by Leos Carax, Claire Denis and More
Launched ten years ago by the Doha Film Institute, Qumra is an industry convention held annually in Qatar’s capital city of Doha. Through panels, workshops, screenings and masterclasses, Qumra brings together a cross-section of producers, festival programmers and journalists in an effort, according to organizers, to “provide mentorship, nurturing, and hands-on development for filmmakers from Qatar and around the world.” This year’s edition, which ran from March 1 to 6, arrived at a particularly fraught moment for the Middle East with Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. After cancelling last November’s Ajyal Film Festival in solidarity with Palestine, the DFI, which […]
by Jordan Cronk on Mar 15, 2024 -
“The Search for Images is a Search That Can Last Forever”: Agnès Godard on The Line and Nenétte et Boni
Agnès Godard films the opening sequence of her fifth collaboration (following four features and a short) with writer-director Ursula Meier, The Line (La Ligne), in static slow motion: Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) hits her mother (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), who falls and collides against the keys of her own piano, rendering her deaf in the impacted ear. A restraining order charges the eldest daughter not to come within 200 meters of her mother—an invisible boundary she immediately ignores with abrasive attempts to make amends until her younger sister paints a literal perimeter around the house. Margaret hovers at a little hill at one end […]
by A.E. Hunt on Mar 31, 2023 -
Apply for the Lynn Shelton “Of a Certain Age” Grant
The Lynn Shelton “Of a Certain Age” Grant is now accepting applications. The unrestricted $25,000 cash grant will be offered to a woman, non-binary or trans filmmaker 39 years or older who has not yet helmed a narrative feature. The grant was established by Northwest Film Forum alongside Duplass Brothers Productions in 2020 after Lynn Shelton’s untimely passing. Some of the late, Seattle-based director’s films include We Go Way Back (her 2006 debut feature), Humpday (2009), Laggies (2014) and Sword of Trust (2019). Shelton was inspired to make her first film at age 39 after learning that French auteur Claire […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jul 12, 2022 -
Back to One, Episode 210: Juliette Binoche
Read just a sample of Juliette Binoche’s credits — Mauvais Sang, Three Colors: Blue, Damage, The English Patient, Chocolat, Certified Copy, Clouds of Sils Maria, Let The Sunshine In — and one thing becomes clear: few actors have been as internationally respected for such a sustained period of time. In this episode, she speaks about the importance of acting from the body and learning to use “sensation” as a starting point. She tells a story about feeling lost on the set of John Boorman’s In My Country, and what set her free should be a lesson to all directors. She […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jul 5, 2022 -
Cannes 2022: Stars at Noon, Tori and Lokita
In France, I mostly don’t get immediately ID’d as American, which I assume is partially because I don’t conform to braying jackass US tourist type and partially because, the older I get, the more I look indeterminately “other.” Generally I first get spoken to in French and play along if I can, then when I can’t keep up I get “Do you speak English?” This is pretty flattering and will obviously only be an increasing asset as the American Experiment continues to go up in flames. A friend noted that, with its virulent displays of racism, Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N. could just as […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 27, 2022 -
Berlinale 2022 Critic’s Notebook: The Novelist’s Film, Both Sides of the Blade, Robe of Gems
2020 got off to a fine start. In February I made my first visit to the Berlinale, where I interviewed a couple of filmmakers and indulged in the competition lineup, a King Vidor retrospective and the 50th anniversary of Forum. Like all of my festival trips, I considered it a working vacation—a chance to see friends, explore a city and escape for a few days from my suburban, white-collar life. At the last press screening I attended, another critic asked if I was Italian before taking a seat a few feet away. Even in the cloistered environment of the festival, […]
by Darren Hughes on Feb 19, 2022 -
“I Always Panic… Panic is My Normal State”: Claire Denis in Conversation with Ira Sachs about Nenette et Boni
On the occasion of Claire Denis’s birthday today, we are reprinting this Fall, 1997 interview from our print edition — writer/director Ira Sachs, whose first feature, The Delta, was in release, speaking with Denis around the U.S. opening of her Nenette et Boni. For the past ten years, the French director Claire Denis has been making a vital group of films which, with their mixture of intimate drama, sociological observation, and political acuity, have established her as an important influence on other independent-minded filmmakers around the world. After working as a crew member on Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law,Denis made […]
by Ira Sachs on Apr 21, 2020 -
Le Cinéma Club Relaunches With Claire Denis’s Very Rare Keep It for Yourself
Founded in 2015 by Marie-Louise Khondji, the streaming site Le Cinéma Club relaunches today with an exciting offering: Claire Denis’s long-lost 1991 40-minute short Keep It for Yourself. The only film she’s ever made in the states, it stars Vincent Gallo and Sara Driver, has a John Lurie score and was shot in New York City. After years of unavailability, a copy was found on a Japanese VHS being sold on Australian eBay. (For more on that story, click here.) From the official press release: The opening weeks of programming are completed with other streaming premieres, rarities and films by new […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 14, 2019 -
Elementary Force: Claire Denis on High Life
No one expected Claire Denis to soften with age. At 72, the French auteur has been a daring and unpredictable force in cinema for three decades now. After delivering last year’s talky romantic comedy Let the Sunshine In, which offered the unexpected sight of Gérard Depardieu as a lovesick psychic, Denis has returned with a certified leap into the unknown. High Life is the filmmaker’s first English-language film, her first science fiction foray, and her first featuring eye-popping CGI. Boasting an international cast that includes Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth and André Benjamin, and set to be released by […]
by Paul Dallas on Mar 14, 2019 -
NYFF 2017: Let the Sunshine In
At Cannes, Claire Denis’s Let the Sunshine In (subtitled Bright Sunshine In on the DCP) premiered to many nonplussed reactions. By some considerable measure her talkiest film, Sunshine tracks a painter, Isabelle (Juliette Binoche), as she slams straight from one romantic dalliance into another. That is, effectively, the entire plot: there are a few scenes that do not involve men, but in general the film marches inexorably and restlessly through a series of failed partnerships. The dance and sex scenes are very familiar — Denis still gets defamiliarizingly close to skins and heads — but the rest is not, necessarily. Denis has […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2017
