Claire Denis

Claire Denis began her filmmaking career relatively late in life. After serving as an assistant to visionary directors Jacques Rivette, Wim Wenders, and Jim Jarmusch, she was nearly 40 when she made her debut as a writer-director with 1988's Chocolat. This pensively clear-eyed vision of colonial Cameroon, rooted in her own experiences as a child, quickly brought her international acclaim. Her signature dreamlike, elliptical style of filmmaking became more pronounced as her career progressed, with the homoerotic Africa-set military drama, Beau Travail, bringing her a new level of international acclaim. The film is loosely based on Melville's Billy Budd, but Denis has always focused more on imagery, music, and sound design than on dialogue and plot. She typically uses these elements to engulf her characters—and the viewer—in a fraught, unstable atmosphere. It's not surprising that a filmmaker whose work is so visceral has a unique power when she turns her eye to the erotic. While Trouble Every Day is a disturbing, bloody movie about vampirism, and Friday Night is a surprisingly blissful romantic dalliance, Denis creates such a sense of intimacy through her rapidly cut close-ups and aural detail that both productions have a palpable sensuality. Though her plots and themes are occasionally opaque, all of her films contain such powerful moments, as vivid as a fever dream.