Writing Life – Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students
France2025documentary90'Personalities
Who said young people do not read good books? It turns out that the work of a recent Nobel laureate, even from before a few decades, resonates deeply with the most intimate experiences of today’s teenagers – and especially with those who find their own experiences reflected in Annie Ernaux’s novels. The film director visits various French secondary schools with her camera, where shared reading and discussions prove that literature can still engage and inspire.
- directed by
- Claire Simon
Born in London, she grew up in France and began her studies in ethnology. Self-taught, she learned to edit, then directed her first short films in the 1980s, before joining the Ateliers Varan, where she became familiar with the realist style of direct cinema, exploring its range of possibilities. After several short films (The Police, Domestic Disputes) and documentaries (Recess, At All Costs), she made her first fiction feature film, A Foreign Body, in 1997. Throughout her career, the filmmaker has enjoyed mixing fiction and reality, as illustrated by Human Geography (2012, documentary) and Gare du Nord (2013, fiction). Whether documentary or fiction, all her work boils down to one question: What is a story? A life? At the same time, she has taught at the university of Paris 8 and Paris 7 as well as Ateliers Varan while also being the head of the directing department at La Fémis.
- cinematography
- Claire Simon
- script
- Claire Simon
- editing
- Luc Forveille
- production
- Emmanuel Perreau (Rosebud Productions)
- Photo
