Philippe Claudel
Encyclopedia
Claudel was born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe
Dombasle-sur-Meurthe
Dombasle-sur-Meurthe is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.-See also:*Communes of the Meurthe-et-Moselle department...
, Meurthe-et-Moselle. In addition to his writing, Claudel is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nancy.
He directed the 2008 film I've Loved You So Long
I've Loved You So Long
I've Loved You So Long is a 2008 French-language drama film written and directed by Philippe Claudel. It tells the story of a woman struggling to interact with her family and find her place in society after spending fifteen years in prison.-Plot:...
(Il y a longtemps que je t'aime). Much admired, it won the 2009 BAFTA for the best film not in English.
Life
After studying in Nancy, he remained there, and for eleven years worked as 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 necessity 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."Awards
His best-known work to date is the novel Les Âmes grisesLes Âmes grises
Les Âmes grises is a novel by the French author Philippe Claudel. It is a first person narrative which revolves around the murder of a young girl in a small provincial French town near the Western Front in 1917. The book was published in France in 2005 and won the Prix Renaudot...
(Grey Souls), which won the Prix Renaudot
Prix Renaudot
The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot is a French literary award which was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of the deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt....
in France, was shortlisted for the American Gumshoe Award, and won Sweden's Martin Beck Award
Martin Beck Award
The Martin Beck Award is an award given by the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy for the best crime novel in translation. It is one of the most prestigious international crime-writing awards....
. He won the 2003 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for Les petites mécaniques, and the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for Brodeck’s Report, ' his hallucinatory story – almost a dark fairy-tale in which Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
meets the Grimms
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
– of an uneasy homecoming after wrenching tragedy."
Novels
- Quelques-uns des cent regrets: roman, Balland, 1999
- Le Bruit des trousseaux (2002)
- Les Âmes grisesLes Âmes grisesLes Âmes grises is a novel by the French author Philippe Claudel. It is a first person narrative which revolves around the murder of a young girl in a small provincial French town near the Western Front in 1917. The book was published in France in 2005 and won the Prix Renaudot...
(2003); Librairie générale française, 2006, ISBN 9782253109082- Grey souls, Translator Adriana Hunter, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Phoenix House, 2005, ISBN 9780297847793
}; Random House Digital, Inc., 2007, ISBN 9781400078011
- La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh, Stock, 2005, ISBN 9782234057746
- Monsieur Linh and His Child, Quercus, 2011, ISBN 9781906694999
- Le Rapport de Brodeck 2009
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Films
- I've Loved You So LongI've Loved You So LongI've Loved You So Long is a 2008 French-language drama film written and directed by Philippe Claudel. It tells the story of a woman struggling to interact with her family and find her place in society after spending fifteen years in prison.-Plot:...
, 2008, with Kristin Scott ThomasKristin Scott ThomasKristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient....
and Elsa ZylbersteinElsa ZylbersteinElsa Zylberstein is a French film, TV, and stage actress. After studying drama, Zylberstein began her film career in 1989, and has appeared in about 50 films... - Tous les soleils, 2011, with Stefano Accorsi, Neri Marcorè, Lisa Cipriani, Clotilde Courau, Anouk Aimée
Adaptations
- Les Âmes grises, 2005, directed by Yves AngeloYves AngeloYves Angelo is a French cinematographer and film director. Angelo has won the César Award for Best Cinematography three times: in 1990 for Nocturne indien, in 1992 for Tous les matins du monde, and in 1994 for Germinal....
, with Jean-Pierre MarielleJean-Pierre MarielleJean-Pierre Marielle is a French actor. He has played in more than a hundred movies in which he brought life to a very large diversity of roles, from the banal citizen , to the serial killer , to the World War II hero , to the compromised spy , to the has-been actor Jean-Pierre Marielle (born...
, Jacques VilleretJacques VilleretJacques Villeret was a French actor.-Early life and Family:Born Jacky Boufroura in Loches, Indre-et-Loire, France, to an Algerian father and a French mother, he is most famous internationally for his role as François Pignon in Le Dîner de Cons, both on the stage and in the later film...
. Distributed by Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...