Claire Simon

At All Costs

Claire Simon
Screening time  
02.03. / Friday, 18:00 - 20:00 Theatre 4  
With the money that he borrowed, Jihad started a business preparing ready-made meals sold in supermarkets.

Despite the fact that the employees are dedicated to their work and Jihad only uses ingredients of the highest quality, the business is not growing the way he would hope and he is running into trouble. However, Jihad is not giving up. As the author’s camera patiently observes them, together with the cook and the secretary, he fights for the survival of his business – at all costs.

Claire_simon

Claire Simon

Claire Simon is a prolific French director, writer, actress, director of photography and editor born in London in 1955. She divides her work between fiction and documentary with the same dedication, often blurring the lines between the two within the same film. Refusing to follow a classic cinema course, she made her first films on her own in the mid-1970s. Simon’s focus is without a doubt anthropocentric – for her, cinema is a way to examine reality closely and her work is often characterized as belonging to the cinéma-vérité tradition. She – always with the utmost respect – gives voice to those who need it, placing emphasis on stories about teenagers, women and immigrants. She makes films with a distinctive fluidity and delicacy; the various realities presented in her work are complex, authentic and textured, while this is achieved with the most straightforward and sincere of cinematic means.This prolific director has more than 15 films to her credit. Among her most notable films are La Police (1988), Les Patients (1990), Scènes de ménage (1991), At All Costs (1995), Récréations, A Foreign Body – her first feature film – both from 1997, her second feature film Ça brûle (2006), God’s Offices (2008), Romance – 800 Kilometers of Difference (2002), Mimi (2003), Gare du Nord (2013), Human Geography (2013), The Woods Dreams are Made of (2015), and The Graduation (2016).

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Coûte que coûte

France
1995, 95'

Directed by:
Claire Simon

Screenplay by:
Claire Simon

Cinematography:
Jérôme Peyrebrune, Claire Simon

Edited by:
Catherine Quesemand

Music:
Arthur H.

Produced by:
La Sept-Arte, Les Films d’Ici

Festivals & Awards:

Cinéma du Réel 1995 – Louis Marcorelles Award; Potsdam Film Festival 1995 – Special Jury Award