Claire DenisFilmography

Occupation:: Director, Screenwriter
Biography:: A provocative director whose films offer richly textured, contemplative examinations of cross-cultural tensions and alienation, Claire Denis is one of French cinema's most distinctive and humanistic storytellers. A prolific filmmaker who is more concerned with the drive of her characters rather...Read More

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35 Rhums

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Grégoire Colin, Nicole Dogue, Ingrid Caven

Synopsis: Time and romantic attraction threaten to sour a family relationship in this drama from writer and director Claire Denis. Lionel (Alex Descas) is a middle-aged widower who makes his living driving a train and shares an apartment with his twentysomething daughter, Joséphine (Mati Diop). Lionel and Read More

2/18/09
White Material

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Isaach de Bankolé, Christopher Lambert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, William Nadylam

Synopsis: In this drama directed and co-written by Claire Denis, Isabelle Huppert plays Maria, a white woman living in an African nation that has been falling into political chaos. Maria owns a coffee plantation, and regards her property as her personal domain; she would rather fight that give up her land Read More

2009
L'Intrus

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Katya Golubeva, Karin Bambourough, Florence Loiret-Caille

Synopsis: Claire Denis' elliptical drama L'Intrus was inspired by a short book written by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy about his heart transplant. In the film, Michel Subor (Le Petit Soldat) stars as Louis, who lives fairly self-sufficiently in a small cabin in the snowy wilds near the Swiss border. Louis has Read More

12/23/05
Toward Mathilde

Crew: Director

2005
Friday Night

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Valérie Lemercier, Vincent Lindon, Hélène de Saint Père, Hélène Fillières, Florence Loiret

Synopsis: Paris resident Laure (Valerie Lemercier) has just finished packing her belongings in preparation for moving in with her lover, though she is oblivious to her apparent jitters at doing so. As she leaves her apartment for the night to join a pair of friends for dinner, Laure gets held up in traffic Read More

5/23/03
Ten Minutes Older: The Cello

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Amit Arroz, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Mark Long, Alexandra Staden, Dominic West

Synopsis: Eight master directors of world cinema combine forces for this omnibus film that focuses cumulatively on the subject of time. Bookended by cello interludes, Ten Minutes Older: The Cello presents just one parameter to each of its filmmakers: no final entry can be more or less than ten minutes long. Read More

2002
Trouble Every Day

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle, Alex Descas, Florence Loiret

Synopsis: Two strangers share a strange and terrible bond in this stylish horror tale that juggles sex and graphic bloodshed. Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo) is a strange man with a forbidding nature who has just married lovely but nervous June (Tricia Vessey), and they've decided to go to Paris for their Read More

3/1/01
Venus Beauty Institute

Actors: Nathalie Baye, Bulle Ogier, Samuel Le Bihan, Jacques Bonnaffé, Mathilde Seigner

Synopsis: A visually stylish comedy with dramatic overtones from director Tonie Marshall, Vénus Beauté (Institut) looks at the lives of three women who work at a small but successful beauty salon. Angele Nathalie Baye is an attractive woman just edging into middle age who is looking for companionship Read More

10/27/00
Beau Travail

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Richard Courcet

Synopsis: In this military drama, a military man finds his position of prominence questioned when a new recruit wins the commander's favor. Galoup (Denis Lavant) is an officer at a French Foreign Legion outpost in the Gulf of Dijbouti, where he enjoys a close relationship with the Commanding Officer (Michel Subor Read More

3/31/00
El Medina

Crew: Screenwriter

1999
Nénette et Boni

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Grégoire Colin, Alice Houri, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Vincent Gallo, Jacques Nollot

Synopsis: Nenette (Alice Houri) is a 14-year-old girl with an attitude problem who runs away from her boarding school only to knock on the door of her older brother Boni (Gregoire Colin). Boni has his own problems most of which center around an erotic fixation with the baker's sexy wife (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi Read More

1/29/97
À Propos De Nice, La Suite

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This French anthology is a tribute to A Propos de Nice (1930), a classic documentary that took a poetic and sometimes satirical look at life in the French Riviera town. This version blends fact and fiction to chronicle life in modern-day Nice and is comprised of seven vignettes, each directed by Read More

1995
En Avoir (Ou Pas)

Actors: Sandrine Kiberlain, Arnaud Giovaninetti, Roschdy Zem, Claire Denis

Synopsis: Alice (Sandrine Kiberlain) is a young woman working in a fish cannery in Boulogne-sur-Mer, who feels that her life has come to a dead end. When she is laid off from her job, she decides to pull up stakes, leaving her boyfriend behind and heading to Lyon. While having a drink at a hotel bar, she Read More

1995
U.S. Go Home

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Alice Houri, Jessica Tharaud, Grégoire Colin, Vincent Gallo

Synopsis: This film is part of the nine volume "Tous les Garcons et les Filles de Leur Age" series which chronicles the adolescent eras of nine prominent directors. "U.S. Go Home," set in 1965, chronicles 24 hours in the lives of three teenagers as they try to finally lose their virginity. Martine, Marlene Read More

1994
I Can't Sleep

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Yekaterina Golubeva, Richard Courcet, Line Renaud, Alex Descas, Béatrice Dalle

Synopsis: This French drama uses two plots that occasionally come together. The stories are set within the multiethnic neighborhoods of Paris. In the first, Daiga (Yekaterina Golubeva), a spunky Lithuanian actress, drives into to town to collect on the promise of a director she slept with. He lied to her Read More

1994
La robe à Cerceau

Crew: Director

Actors: Jacques Nolot, Dani

1992
Contre L'Oubli

Crew: Director

Actors: Catherine Deneuve, Philippe Noiret, Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sami Frey

Synopsis: Amnesty International produced this film, which features more than two dozen greats of French cinema making pleas for the lives of political prisoners around the world. Each filmmaker speaks passionately on behalf of an individual whose life has been warped by political intolerance, imprisonment Read More

1991
S'en Fout la Mort

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Isaach de Bankolé, Alex Descas, Jean-Claude Brialy, Solveig Dommartin

Synopsis: The two black men in this tragedy live on the fringes of French society, and come from Africa and the Caribbean. Among the things they share in common is involvement in the illegal sport of cockfighting. The film follows their exploits and daily lives among the poor of France, as they train their Read More

1990
Jacques Rivette Le Veilleur

Crew: Director

Actors: Jacques Rivette, Bulle Ogier, Jean Babilee

1990
Chocolat

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Isaach de Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, François Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin, Cécile Ducasse

Synopsis: Set in French Colonial Africa, Chocolat is told from the viewpoint of 8-year-old Cecile Ducasse. With no other frame of reference, the innocent Ducasse accepts the subjugation of the black natives by the white colonists as the natural order of things. The girl grows gradually aware of the social Read More

3/10/89
Man No Run

Crew: Director

1989
Wings of Desire

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Peter Falk, Otto Sander, Curt Bois

Synopsis: Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who watch over the city of Berlin. They don't have harps or wings (well, they usually don't have wings) and they prefer overcoats to gossamer gowns. But they can travel unseen through the city, listening to people's thoughts, watching their Read More

4/29/88
Down by Law

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Ellen Barkin

Synopsis: Jim Jarmusch follows his groundbreaking Stranger Than Paradise with another rambling, character-driven film with a twisted sense of humor. Set in a seedy New Orleans summer, Down By Law details the meeting of three unlikely convicts and their just as unlikely escape. Zack (Tom Waits) is an Read More

9/20/86
Paris, Texas

Crew: Art Director

Actors: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clément, Hunter Carson

Synopsis: Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is wandering through the Texas desert, a bit shaky and in desperate need of water, when he stumbles into a bar and collapses. A German doctor of dubious credentials finds a phone number in Travis' wallet, which belongs to his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell). Walt is Read More

1983
Mais Ou Est Donc Ornicar

Actors: Geraldine Chaplin, Brigitte Fossey, Jean-François Stévenin, Didier Flamand, Jean-Jacques Biraud

Synopsis: The relationships between men and women are examined in this drama. The story begins as two young women set out to find their own identities independent of men. One begins directing a video production unit for sociological research while the other becomes a successful garage mechanic. As she heads Read More

1979