Benoît Jacquot

Directing

Benoît Jacquot

Born 1947-02-05 · Paris, France

Benoît Jacquot is a French film director and screenwriter who has had a varied career in European cinema. Born in Paris, Jacquot began his career as assistant director of Marguerite Duras films, including Nathalie Granger, India Song, and also actor in the 1973 short film La Sœur du cadre. He turned to writing and directing with the 1975 film The Musician Killer, which starred Anna Karina. He has directed over forty films, the most notable of which to American audiences are La Désenchantée (1990), starring Judith Godrèche, and A Single Girl (1995), starring Virginie Ledoyen. In 2003, he directed Massenet's opera Werther conducted by Antonio Pappano at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His film Farewell, My Queen opened the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2012. His 2014 film Three Hearts competed for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival. In July 2024, Jacquot was charged with rape, including of a minor, and was barred from directing and having contact with minors.

Acting credits

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets poster
6.7

In the 28th century, Valerian and Laureline are special operatives charged with keeping order throughout the human territories. On assignment from the Minister of Defense, the two undertake a mission to Alpha, an ever-expanding metropolis where species from across the universe have converged over centuries to share knowledge, intelligence, and cultures. At the center of Alpha is a mysterious dark force which threatens the peaceful existence of the City of a Thousand Planets, and Valerian and Laureline must race to identify the menace and safeguard not just Alpha, but the future of the universe.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

2017

Chinese Puzzle poster
6.6

Xavier is a 40-year-old father of two who still finds life very complicated. When the mother of his children moves to New York, he can't bear them growing up far away from him and so he decides to move there as well.

Chinese Puzzle

2013

By Heart poster
5.9

It’s summertime, 2021. Isabelle Huppert plays Lioubov, Chekhov’s unforgettably heroine in The Cherry Orchard. In a near theatre, Fabrice Luchini recites Nietzsche. Both actors are premiering at Avignon’s Festival. When they leave backstage to stand out on stage, they are completely transformed. As everything seems utterly natural, audience does not imagine what happened before. By following their daily lives during the weeks preceding the premieres, Benoît Jacquot brings a singular perspective of the two actors and shows them like we’ve never seen before.

By Heart

2022

India Song poster
6.3

Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the boredom in her life.

India Song

1975

Joan poster
5.0

Jeanne is interned in a psychiatric hospital. She claims to be Joan of Arc.

Joan

2012

Le Navire Night poster
6.6

Le Navire Night is a story of love and desire sustained and nourished through sound waves. The film’s voice-over tells the story of a woman, terminally ill with leukemia, living in isolation at her wealthy father's villa, and a man working night shifts at a telephone company. They have never met in person.

Le Navire Night

1979

Catherine Deneuve, in the eye of the camera poster
7.2

She worked with the world’s greatest actors and directors: Buñuel, Mastroianni, Lellouche, Depardieu... The film guides us throughout her career with the filmmakers with whom she invented herself not to be a “cold blonde actress”, thanks to great interviews of many artists who crossed her path.

Catherine Deneuve, in the eye of the camera

2023

Looking for Hortense poster
5.6

Damien, a Chinese civilization professor, lives with his wife, Iva, a stage director, and their son Noé. The couple's relationship has drifted into routine that has drained it of love. Damien finds himself trapped one day by Iva, who orders him to ask his father, a senior member of the French Council of State, for help in preventing Zorica, a woman Iva knows, from being deported. But Damien and his father don't get on and are barely ever in touch with each other. This dangerous mission throws Damien into a spiral that will turn his life upside down.

Looking for Hortense

2012

The Theatre of the Matters poster
7.0

The fortunes of a small theatrical company based in the Paris suburbs.

The Theatre of the Matters

1977

Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert poster
7.2

The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.

Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert

1976

No artwork available
8.0

The sister of a manager who finds work for the unemployed, instructs her brother's employee to find unemployed people.

La Sœur du cadre

1973

Lubitsch, le patron poster
NR

A documentary about the life and career of film director Ernst Lubitsch

Lubitsch, le patron

2010

Rendez-vous chez Lacan poster
5.6

Do you know Lacan, which many consider as the greatest psychoanalyst since Freud? Beyond the myth, the legends and sometimes, the curses, this film by Gérard Miller allows us to discover his work and his personality, through the testimony of his patients, his students, and also his relatives. Born with the XXth century into an upper-middle-class Catholic family, a psychiatrist by training, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of culture, a friend of Picasso, Levi-Strauss and Sartre, Lacan was a great theoretician, an outstanding practitioner, and he remains the most modern, the most challenging and even the most sulphurous of psychoanalysts. The director Gerard Miller met Lacan thanks to his brother, Jacques-Alain, the most faithful of his students, who married his daughter Judith. Their close and intense relationship makes this film exceptional.

Rendez-vous chez Lacan

2011

Catherine Deneuve, belle et bien là poster
7.2

Catherine Deneuve couldn’t care less about being a celebrity, but fame made her an icon long ago and she occupies a special place in our imagination. The star is not one to let others get too close, but when she gives you her confidence, she keeps her word. If Deneuve’s career covers a half-century of cinema, it also bears witness to the force of a generation that experienced the deepest transformation of mores. This portrait reflects her entirely. The story of a mystery and an adventure.

Catherine Deneuve, belle et bien là

2010

Short Memory poster
5.3

In this thriller, a UNESCO translator stumbles across a group which is hiding and supporting Nazis and facilitating their travel around the world. She had been given an assignment to study the work of a writer who recently had died, and the conspiracy is revealed in materials he left behind. She comes upon a young man who is going through the writer's papers, and she immediately assumes he must be one of the conspirators. However, he soon convinces her of his innocence in that regard, and the two together begin a search for the ringleader.

Short Memory

1982

The Ministries of Art poster
7.3

Philippe Garrel’s documentary on France’s second wave of masterful filmmakers. Featuring Jean Eustache, Chantal Akerman, André Téchiné, Leos Carax, Jacques Doillon and Benoit Jacquot.

The Ministries of Art

1989

Behind the camera

Farewell, My Queen poster
6.0

A look at the relationship between Marie Antoinette and one of her readers during the final days of the French Revolution.

Farewell, My Queen

2012

Farewell, My Queen poster
6.0

A look at the relationship between Marie Antoinette and one of her readers during the final days of the French Revolution.

Farewell, My Queen

2012

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

2013

La Vie de Marianne poster
7.9

In the aristocratic society of the seventeenth century, the fate of Marianne child who survived the deadly attack on a convoy.

La Vie de Marianne

1997

La Vie de Marianne poster
7.9

In the aristocratic society of the seventeenth century, the fate of Marianne child who survived the deadly attack on a convoy.

La Vie de Marianne

1997

3 Hearts poster
5.5

A twist of fate leaves a hapless accountant romantically torn between two sisters.

3 Hearts

2014

3 Hearts poster
5.5

A twist of fate leaves a hapless accountant romantically torn between two sisters.

3 Hearts

2014

By Heart poster
5.9

It’s summertime, 2021. Isabelle Huppert plays Lioubov, Chekhov’s unforgettably heroine in The Cherry Orchard. In a near theatre, Fabrice Luchini recites Nietzsche. Both actors are premiering at Avignon’s Festival. When they leave backstage to stand out on stage, they are completely transformed. As everything seems utterly natural, audience does not imagine what happened before. By following their daily lives during the weeks preceding the premieres, Benoît Jacquot brings a singular perspective of the two actors and shows them like we’ve never seen before.

By Heart

2022

By Heart poster
5.9

It’s summertime, 2021. Isabelle Huppert plays Lioubov, Chekhov’s unforgettably heroine in The Cherry Orchard. In a near theatre, Fabrice Luchini recites Nietzsche. Both actors are premiering at Avignon’s Festival. When they leave backstage to stand out on stage, they are completely transformed. As everything seems utterly natural, audience does not imagine what happened before. By following their daily lives during the weeks preceding the premieres, Benoît Jacquot brings a singular perspective of the two actors and shows them like we’ve never seen before.

By Heart

2022

The Disenchanted poster
5.3

A worldly French teen is determined to escape from her current situation for a better life.

The Disenchanted

1990

The Disenchanted poster
5.3

A worldly French teen is determined to escape from her current situation for a better life.

The Disenchanted

1990

Casanova, Last Love poster
4.8

Year 1763. Forced into exile, the famous libertine Giacomo Casanova leaves Paris and travels to London, where he meets Marianne de Charpillon, a young prostitute to whom he is so attracted that he forgets about the other women.

Casanova, Last Love

2019

Casanova, Last Love poster
4.8

Year 1763. Forced into exile, the famous libertine Giacomo Casanova leaves Paris and travels to London, where he meets Marianne de Charpillon, a young prostitute to whom he is so attracted that he forgets about the other women.

Casanova, Last Love

2019

Massenet: Werther poster
8.6

Werther loves Charlotte, but she promised her mother on her deathbed that she would marry Albert. After the marriage Charlotte suggests that Werther should travel - but not forget her. In addition to the singing and orchestral accompaniment, the entire cast acts very convincingly. And, there's no backstage mugging, entrances and spoken nonsense to spoil the experience of the drama.

Massenet: Werther

2010

Diary of a Chambermaid poster
5.2

In the late 19th century, a chambermaid from Paris relocates to a remote household in Provence, engages in trysts and finds herself enraptured with a coach driver.

Diary of a Chambermaid

2015

Diary of a Chambermaid poster
5.2

In the late 19th century, a chambermaid from Paris relocates to a remote household in Provence, engages in trysts and finds herself enraptured with a coach driver.

Diary of a Chambermaid

2015

Sade poster
5.6

A man prepares himself to be transferred to a detention center and rest home where he will relive one more time the highlights of his youth.

Sade

2000

Belle poster
5.8

A couple have a peaceful existence in a small provincial town. He is a teacher and she runs an opticians practical. Their life is turned upside when Belle, a friend’s daughter who is lodging with them, is found dead in her room. The husband becomes the prime suspect as the only one at home at the time.

Belle

2025

Belle poster
5.8

A couple have a peaceful existence in a small provincial town. He is a teacher and she runs an opticians practical. Their life is turned upside when Belle, a friend’s daughter who is lodging with them, is found dead in her room. The husband becomes the prime suspect as the only one at home at the time.

Belle

2025

A Single Girl poster
5.9

A young Parisian must make major decisions about pregnancy, a job and her boyfriend.

A Single Girl

1995

A Single Girl poster
5.9

A young Parisian must make major decisions about pregnancy, a job and her boyfriend.

A Single Girl

1995

Return to the Beloved poster
6.3

Julien seeks to reconquer Jeanne, his ex-wife, of whom he is separated and who lives with another man. He is prepared to go far to make it happen.

Return to the Beloved

1979

Eva poster
4.4

A playwright encounters a mysterious woman when he takes shelter in a chalet during a violent snowstorm and becomes obsessed with her.

Eva

2018

Eva poster
4.4

A playwright encounters a mysterious woman when he takes shelter in a chalet during a violent snowstorm and becomes obsessed with her.

Eva

2018