Raw reality

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2018

While her latest film, High Life, starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, causes a sensation at the fall film festivals prior to its theatrical release, Claire Denis - soon celebrating a 50-year career - will attend the Lumière festival for the first time. She will introduce a selection of her films and meet the festivalgoers, a prime opportunity to listen to her speak about her demanding, visceral, musical cinema.

One of the most venerable filmmakers in the modern French landscape, Claire Denis cultivates her films to satisfy an unflinching desire for truth. The organic relationship of absolute simplicity that she maintains with the image and sound gives her films a raw and vital quality. "I identify with films that trust physical narration," she confessed a few years ago. Refusing ubiquity of dialogue, Claire Denis invented - with Wim Wenders (for whom she was assistant director), as well as Robert Enrico and Jacques Rivette - a style that is also a manner of expressing the world.

Robert Pattinson in High Life (2018)

Driven by the journey of ordinary characters, rooted in reality, the director explores human relationships, questions desire (Beau Travail, Friday Night...), interspersing her films with base violence (Trouble Every Day). The image always serves as her guide, along with the music, an inseparable element of Denis’ approach to the cinema. Highly influenced by a childhood spent in Africa, she commands a unique look at a misunderstood continent (Chocolat, her first film, White Material...) while assembling a faithful team, who accompany her on each shoot.

Although the work of Claire Denis has thus far been marked by an earnest quest for reality, the director drew inspiration from science fiction for High Life, which stars British actor Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche. The film follows convicted criminals who agree to participate in a government space mission to find alternative sources of energy.

High Life will see its French premiere during the Lumière festival, where Claire Denis will deliver a master class and introduce several works from her filmography.

Juliette Binoche in Let the Sunshine In (2017)

The films of Claire Denis at the Lumière festival

Chocolat (1988, 1h45)
Trouble Every Day (2001, 1h41)
Let the Sunshine In (2017, 1h34)
Premiere - High Life (2018, 1h54)

Master class Meet Claire Denis
Comédie Odéon
Thursday October 18th at 11:30 am

In collaboration with Ad Vitam, Forum des Images, Orange Studio and Wild Bunch.