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.
Born in London, she grew up in France and began her studies in ethnology while also learning 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. Her filmography includes Works like ‘God’s Offices’ (2008, SACD prize at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight), ‘The Graduation’ 2016, Best Documentary at the Venice International Film Festival) or the documentaries series ‘The Village’ (2019). In 2022, she came back to fiction with ‘I Want To Talk About Duras’ and in 2023 she premiered ‘Our Body’ at the Berlin International Film Festival.