Notre corps

Synopsis

In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women’s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.

Once again, this meticulously attentive documentary maker films the lives of others with empathetic passion, this time focusing on the female body to emphasise its social and political dimension.

Biography and Films

Claire Simon (London, 1955) grew up in France and began studying ethnology while learning Arabic. As a self-taught filmmaker, she learned editing 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.

Her early shorts, including Les patients, Récréations and Coûte que coûte, were selected for numerous festivals and helped launch a vogue in documentary making in France. In 1997 she presented her first fiction film, Sinon, Oui.

Throughout her prolific career, she has blended documentary and fiction. In 2000 she released Ça c’est vraiment toi, which won awards at festivals in both categories. 800 km de différence (2002) continued in the documentary vein, featuring her daughter as the protagonist. However, with Ça brûle (2006) and Les Bureaux de Dieu (2008) she returned to fiction. Both films were presented at Cannes, where the latter receiving the SACD Award at the Directors' Fortnight.

With Le concours, she won Best Documentary Award at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. In 2018 Premières Solitudes, a portrait of contemporary teenagers that eschews the usual stereotypes, was selected for the Berlinale Forum. After releasing the documentary series Le Village, in 2022, she returned to fiction with Vous ne désirez que moi. Notre corps premiered worldwide at the Berlinale.