Claire Simon

Born in London in 1955, Claire Simon studied ethnology, and Arabic and Berber languages. She learned filmmaking through editing and simultaneously made independent short films. She discovered the practice of direct cinema at the Ateliers Varan and directed several documentary films such as Coûte que coûte (1995) and Récréations (1998), which were awarded at numerous festivals. She then wrote and directed three feature fiction films that were presented at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes: Sinon oui (1997), Ça brûle (2006), and Les bureaux de Dieu (2008). Among her more recent films are Gare du Nord (2013), premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival; Le bois dont les rêves sont faits (2015); Le concours (2017), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Best Documentary award; and Premières solitudes (2018), presented at the Berlinale. In 2019, she chronicled the surprising adventure of Lussas, the "documentary village" that gave birth to Tënk, in a documentary series. She also released a feature film on the same subject, Le fils de l'épicière, le maire, le village et le monde (2020). In 2023, her film Notre corps, entirely shot at Tenon Hospital in Paris, was presented at the Berlinale. Claire Simon's cinema plays with the boundaries between documentary and fiction. She seeks the novelistic in real life and injects reality into her fiction.