“'Chocolat' was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot - a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.”

French film director and screenwriter

Claire Denis is a French film director and screenwriter. She is known for films that have shaped European cinema, including Beau Travail (1999), which has been described as one of the great films of the 1990s and of all time. Her work often returns to colonial and post-colonial West Africa, along with questions of life in modern France. Across her films, she explores identity, history, and social unease with a restrained, observant style.