Critics regularly name Claire Denis as amongst the most important directors working today. Matt Fagerholm calls her ‘one of the most revered auteurs in world cinema’; Marjorie Vecchio names Denis ‘a leader’ in the field; and Erika Balsom describes Denis’s films as ‘among the most compelling of contemporary cinema’. Having worked as a director for over thirty years, Denis’s story is now well known. Born in France and raised in colonial West Africa, she worked as an intern at Télé Niger and pursued filmmaking at the IDHEC after dropping her studies in economics. In the 1980s, she worked with Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch as an assistant director; she then went on to impress international audiences at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival with her debut feature, Chocolat (1988), a story of a white French family living in colonial Cameroon. Throughout her career, Denis has earned many descriptors: a subtle chronicler of contemporary France, an observer of the postcolonial condition, and a sensitive storyteller of human intimacy and relationships. She is also the creator of provocative works. In 2001, Denis’s horror film Trouble Every Day surprised audiences at the Cannes Film Festival with its melancholy story of people who murder their lovers. James Quandt included the film in his famous account of the New French Extremity alongside other provocateurs such as Bruno Dumont, Patrice Chéreau and Philippe Grandrieux. Yet Denis’s engagement with provocative themes did not end with Trouble Every Day. She returned to transgressive material in her film noir Bastards (Les salauds, 2013), a thriller centring on the rape of a teenage girl co-written with her frequent collaborator, Jean-Pol Fargeau. Five years later, Denis directed the science-fiction film High Life (2018) – also co-written with Fargeau – a space odyssey filled with instances of rape, forced impregnation and incestuous eroticism. Respected, celebrated and renowned as a sensitive and empathetic filmmaker, Denis also demonstrates a capacity to shock and disturb.

Given her career as a leading female auteur in global cinema, exactly how Denis’s films provoke negative emotional responses warrants further exploration.