DENIS’ TURN: French filmmaker and screenwriter Claire Denis is the director of the 32nd installment of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales film series.
The new short film, titled “Avec Kim,” will premiere Sept. 5 during the upcoming edition of the Venice Film Festival. It will follow the screening of the previous episode “Discipline,” which was directed by Mona Fastvold and was first presented in New York last February, as reported.
“Making films for me is to get rid of explanation. It is a journey into the impossible,” teased Denis in a statement.
Born in Paris in 1946, the director spent much of her childhood in colonial French Africa, an experience that shaped her work, which is known for featuring a sensual style and exploring themes of desire, alienation and race through a blend of narrative and abstraction.
Denis gained international acclaim with the 1988 movie “Chocolat,” a meditation about a French woman reflecting on her childhood in Cameroon and her relationship with her family’s African servant. It was praised by critics and nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
It was followed by other renowned movies, including the almost dialogue-free drama “Beau Travail” in 1999 and “35 Shots of Rum” in 2008. In recent years, her filmography expanded to comprise “High Life” — her first English-language feature film starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche in 2018 — and the 2022 releases “Both Sides of the Blade” and “Stars at Noon,” with the latter scooping up the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Her latest feature, “The Fence,” was released last year.
In directing a short film for Miu Miu, Denis follows in the footsteps of the likes of Alice Diop, Joanna Hogg, Dakota Fanning, Chloë Sevigny, Agnès Varda, Alice Rohrwacher, Miranda July and Zoe Cassavetes, to name a few.
Introduced in 2011, the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series is an expression of the brand’s creative director Miuccia Prada’s passion for cinema. In 2023, to further amplify and solidify the program, supporting rising talent in the film industry, nominating future directors, and to further ensure visibility for the series across channels and online, the Italian brand established the new Miu Miu Women’s Tales Committee, including Prada; Prada Group talent relations special projects director Verde Visconti; award-winning “Selma” director, writer and producer Ava DuVernay, who directed the fifth Women’s Tales; Australian costume, production and set designer Catherine Martin, and American actress, writer and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal.
