Biographie

18 novembre 1983 · Paris, France

1,78 m

Both parents are doctors.

One of three women to have won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, alongside Jane Campion for La Leçon de piano (1993) and Justine Triet for Anatomie d'une chute (2023).

[press conference for Titane (2021) at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival] I started writing Titane during the post-production phase of Grave (2016). When one works for five years on a film like Raw, sometimes you need to survive by having other stories in your mind, so that's why I started Titane at that moment. The first thing is that Titane was born with the idea of putting love at the centre of the narrative - unconditional love, absolute love, without any form of determinism. It appears in other films like Raw, but is peripheral to the characters' trajectory and I was somewhat frustrated in that regard, and so I wanted to go further and discover everything that was possible about the acceptance of another person. When people hear of Titane, not everyone will necessarily think of a love story, but for me it is a love story.

[Cannes press conference for Titane (2021)] When we make such a film, of course we note that it will create a divide in the audience. What is important is that it should move people - whether it elicits rejection or admiration. If it creates a reaction it means that we are touching something in people and that it creates a debate, sparks an interior debate. I think that's what is most important. If cinema were a world of statutes, of ready-made answers where we try to elicit agreement, it would be a dead art form. I therefore think that it's important that it should bubble and I think that's why we make films. I'm absolutely delighted. So long as it elicits reaction, so long as it elicits liveliness, I am happy.

[on winning the Palme d'Or for Titane (2021)] I still did not believe it throughout the whole ceremony. I thought maybe I misheard it, he [Spike Lee] must have said something else, or he must have misread his card. At no moment I thought that I actually had the Palme d'Or. I had a feeling, when I was onstage, that it was bigger than me, and it was bigger than my film. It was very, very intense. Being the second woman [after Jane Campion] feels like I'm part of a movement that is going forward.....things were moving through me at that moment, and through my film.

[press conference for Alpha (2025) at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival] The theme of unconditional love has been present in my other films as well. My films are very black ones but despite everything I'm actually an eternal optimist! That might make people laugh, but it's true. I firmly believe and evermore so today, that love is an act of resistance and at a given point of time in our lives or in society sometimes in general it's the only thing you can hang on to and that's a tremendous asset - it can change a lot of things. Why did I decide to talk about brothers and sisters and the mother and daughter relationship? It's because I wanted to highlight a kind of trauma - a trauma that's handed down from one generation to the next, from the moment where pain may not have been assimilated and death has become a taboo subject. There's this bereavement which has never been overcome, so it goes from one generation to another and there's no end in sight for this suffering, as time goes by. I really believe that the only thing that's possible is acceptance - letting things go, in order to end that cycle. However, that applies a great deal to the family and, for me, the family and society work in a similar way. Look at what we're experiencing today - it's like being in a cycle that is bewildering and terrifying and we don't know when it's going to stop. We don't know how to stop things, what to do. My film is a way of depicting this fear, dealing with it within this family. And this was dealt with in a period film, so to speak, because we're talking about a past in which people view things as they want. It's not today, and I believe that this transposition helped me to achieve a distance which I definitely wouldn't have today, taking into account the state of stupefaction we all find ourselves in.

[Cannes press conference for Alpha (2025), asked about the number of disturbing scenes in the film] A disturbance is not something that I seek. I think probably it's a collateral to what I'm trying to do, which I completely accept, and I think is absolutely predictable. But it's not something I seek. I think what I seek is really to - because ultimately I think that's what not only cinema but art is for - is to put yourself in the shoes of someone you don't know, of someone you'll never be, and to feel them. And I think the closer you get to the skin, and the more you get under the skin of someone else, the more love there is, the more empathy you can trigger. And it does imply some violence. But I do intend to make you feel the pain that other people feel. To me, that's the only way to feel the love as well. So, again, it's a collateral, but I think it's a must.