Céline Sciamma

Céline Sciamma is an openly lesbian French screenwriter and director whose films explore gender, identity, and desire with precision and restraint. She studied at La Fémis, France's national film school, and her debut Water Lilies (2007) sensitively depicted adolescent female same-sex desire. Tomboy (2011) followed a gender-nonconforming child navigating a new neighborhood, and Girlhood (2014) offered a lyrical portrait of a young Black woman in the Paris banlieues. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) — a rapturously received period love story between a painter and her subject, set in 18th-century Brittany — won Best Screenplay and the Queer Palm at Cannes and became one of the defining queer films of its decade. Sciamma was in a long-term relationship with actress Adèle Haenel, who starred in several of her films. Her children's film Petite Maman (2021) was equally acclaimed, and she is widely regarded as one of the most important filmmakers working today.