Our Body (Notre corps)

Claire Simon

Claire Simon widely contributed to documentary cinema’s acknowledgment and spreading in France through many films that left a trail in the French cinematographic landscape. Her films reflect the question she never stops asking: what is a story? What is a story nowadays ? She makes a hero out of anyone she’s filming, whether they are children, a young couple, young teenagers, fifty yeard old lesbian or family planning’s counselors.

Born in London, Claire Simon grew up in France and began her studies in ethnology while also learning in Arabic. Self-taught, she learned to edit and directed her first short films in the 1970s, before joining the Ateliers Varan, where she became familiar with the realist style of direct cinema.

After several short films (The Police, Domestic Stages) and documentaries (Playtime, At all Costs), in 1997 she produced her first fictional feature film, A Foreign Body. 
During her prolific career, the filmmaker has combined true and fictional stories, as illustrated in her films It Burns (2005), or Playtime (1992).

Her filmography also includes God's Offices (2008), The Graduation (2016), Young Solitude (2018), The Village (2019), I want to talk about Duras (2022) and Our Body (2023).