Born in Paris in 1946 but raised in west Africa, the film director Claire Denis worked as an assistant to film-makers such as Jacques Rivette and Wim Wenders before making her unforgettable debut with Chocolat (1988), a semi-autobiographical film set in Cameroon. Her work is broad-ranging, including fiction and documentary. Highlights include Beau Travail (1999), loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, and more recently High Life (2018), her first film in English, which starred Robert Pattinson. She has two new films: Both Sides of the Blade, which won the best director prize at the Berlin film festival and is in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema now, and Stars at Noon, joint winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes.
