French writer and film director
Philippe Claudel | |
|---|---|
Philippe Claudel in 2013 | |
| Born | (1962-02-02) 2 February 1962 (age 62) Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, Film director, Writer |
| Years active | 1999–present |
Philippe Claudel (born 2 February 1962) is a French writer and film director.[1]
Claudel was born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, Meurthe-et-Moselle. In addition to his writing, Claudel is a professor of literature at the University of Nancy.[2]
He directed the 2008 film I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime).[3] Much admired, it won the 2009 BAFTA for the best film not in English.[4]
After studying in Nancy, he remained there and for eleven years worked as a teacher in prisons. Contact with his students inspired short stories, novels, and then screenplays. He has said that the experience made him give up his simple opinions about people, about guilt, about the water to judge others. "It's clear to me now that it would have been impossible for me to write a novel like Brodeck's Report or Grey Souls, to make a movie like I've Loved You So Long, if I hadn't been in jail."[5]
His best-known work to date is the novel Les Âmes grises (Grey Souls), which won the Prix Renaudot in France, was shortlisted for the American Gumshoe Award, and won Sweden's Martin Beck Award. He won the 2003 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for Les petites mécaniques, and the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for Brodeck’s Report,[6][7] ' his hallucinatory story – almost a dark fairy-tale in which Kafka meets the Grimms – of an uneasy homecoming after wrenching tragedy."[8]
His debut film I've Loved You So Long won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. Claudel also won the César Award for Best First Feature Film for the film.