The Oscars were just around the corner, and we finally got to know everybody who got a golden statuette. There is, however, an outstanding winner that is worth the mention: the french director and screenwriter Justine Triet. Being the only woman nominated for Best Director in 2024, for her most recent film, Anatomy of a Fall, she has joined the select group of eight female filmmakers that have run the category.
Long before making P.I.M.P by 50 Cent the soundtrack to one of the most critically acclaimed movies of last year, Triet already had a long relationship with cinema. Let’s see into her career!
Where it all started
Born in Fecámp, France, Justine attended the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. Her first short film, released in 2007, was a documentary piece about the Parisian riots against the First Employment Contract. On The Spot gives nuance to the conflict by analyzing how the violence during that moment affected the protestors.
During the early years of Triet’s career, most of her works were documental pieces. Following her debut, the director released Solférino, her first feature film, in 2009. Set during the 2007 French presidential election, the documentary examines the mediatic chaos that surrounded the victory of the conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy.
Shadows in the House (2010) is Justine Triet’s last documentary. The film follows Paulo Gustavo, a fifteen-year-old boy who spends his days at a Social center of the evangelistic Church in Sao Paulo, Brazil, due to his mother’s alcoholism problems. Valeria, the social worker in charge of Gustavo’s case, is assigned to make the report that validates whether or not Gisele, the mother, gets custody of her children. The movie is focused on the court hearing that is going to decide Paulo and Gisele’s destiny.
A New Chapter: Creating Stories
In 2012, Justine began to explore new paths in filmmaking. Two Ships marks a new chapter in the director’s life as her first fictional work. The short film follows the meeting between Laetitia (Laetitia Dosch), a free-spirited actress, and Thomas (Thomas Lévy-Lasne), a broke painter. Opening a new era in Triet’s career, the production won Best European Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
“I will never direct like someone who never made documentaries before, which means that I have certain instincts when directing.”
The French filmmaker dives into the fictional world and creates Age of Panic (2013), a comedic drama about the 2007 presidential elections in France. Heavily inspired by her previous work Solférino Triet doesn’t truly abandon the documentary style. In an interview with Film Doo, she declares:
Age of Panic was so well received that in 2014, Justine was nominated to a César Awards (the french Oscars) in the Best First Feature Film.
After such a success, Triet returns to the directing and writing chair in In Bed With Victoria (2016). The film follows Victoria (Virginie Efira), a lawyer and mother of two daughters who meets two old friends at a wedding. Later, she finds out one of them was accused of murder. The comedy was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and received two César Awards Nominations in the Best Film and Best Original Screenplay categories.
Following the theme of her last movies, which were mainly studies about female experiences and their nuances, Justine creates Sibyl (2019). The feature follows a psychotherapist named Sibyl (Virginie Efira), who sees her patient Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos) as a source of inspiration for her writing projects.
For the first time, Triet cosigns the screenplay with Arthur Harari, her long-term partner. Even though Harari was a recurring actor in the director’s works – such as Age of Panic and In Bed With Victoria – only in Sibyl he starts working behind the cameras with her.
The 2019 film also unveils Justine Triet’s films to Palme d’Or, the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, and it was nominated against titles like Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Parasite. The French director, however, lost to Bong Joon-Ho’s feature.
The ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Era
After four years without releasing any new projects, in May of 2023, Justine puts into the world Anatomy of a Fall, a legal thriller about the mysterious death of a man. The film stars Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter, a successful writer accused of the murder of her husband. The only witness is Daniel, the couple’s child.
The production was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, and, at this time, Triet received her first Palme d’Or. She was only the third woman to accept this award in the festival’s history, accompanied by Jane Champion for The Piano (1993) and Julia Ducournau for Titane (2021).
Anatomy of a Fall was groundbreaking in Triet’s career and led her to worldwide fame fifteen years into her career. The movie competed for many international awards including the César Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Academy Awards, in which the French director reached the mark of the eighth woman nominated in the Best Director category.
Unfortunately, Justine lost the directing prize to Christopher Nolan’s work in Oppenheimer, but she did bring one Oscar statuette home; Triet and Arthur Harari won Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards with their second collaboration to the big screen.
Justine Triet has had a very stimulating career on the run. Starting from documentaries and going into fictional screenplays, she keeps showing her ability to portray real, nuanced characters – real or not. Anatomy of a Fall may be her most successful movie for now, however, we know for a fact that such a brilliant mind like hers is going to bring many more amazing and intriguing movies into the world. Now, we wait excitedly for everything Triet has to offer in the future.
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The article above was edited by Isadora Quaglia.
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