Claire Denis

Bodies, heat and desire, filmed by a French director who grew up in colonial Africa. In Beau Travail a former Foreign Legion officer remembers his posting in Djibouti and the young recruit who unsettled it. In White Material a woman holds on to her family's coffee plantation while rebels and the army fight for control of the country. Denis tells very little in dialogue, and you learn who her people are from how they move, eat and touch.

Signature

• Stories told in fragments, with key events left offscreen.
• The body in training, at work or in desire, from legionnaires to the Paris honeymoon of Trouble Every Day.
• Colonial and postcolonial Africa (Beau Travail, White Material).
• Music by Stuart Staples and Tindersticks across many films.