Before becoming an actress, filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright and street acrobat, Coline Serreau studied the organ, musicology, then dance, acrobatics and, last but not least, trapeze artistry in Annie Fratellini’s circus school. She regularly frequented the Cinémathèque française, and doubtless saw the first Lubitsch retrospective in 1967. From 1969, wasting no time and refusing to be pigeonholed, Coline Serreau began enchanting audiences with her acting, her writing and as a director of theatre, film and opera. Sassy and as cynical as Diogenes, her oeuvre protests through comedy; in stormy weather, a Capra-Lubitsch approach is always the best antidote to base instincts. As far back as 1978 she said: “I like people to be playful and to question things. There are trends aplenty in men’s cinema, a new way of thinking. I refuse to be put in a ghetto and I’ll prove it. I have as much ambition as any man. Women are right to feel colonised, and be far more subversive.”

Curated by Émilie Cauquy and Mariann Lewinsky