Audrey Diwan has been shaking up the French film industry in recent years. With her new feature, Emmanuelle, on release and a seat on France’s Oscar committee, the auteur, who is working to put desire back on the big screen, is likely to raise even more eyebrows in 2025.

Early in the morning, as Paris begins to wake, Diwan likes to draw the curtains in her living room and watch a film. “It’s the best time of day for it,” she says, welcoming monocle into her 9th-arrondissement apartment. She projects films directly onto a niche in the wall. On the floor next to the fireplace are piles of dvds. “There are only two shops in Paris where you can still rent them. I go to Le Vidéo Club de la Butte in Montmartre, which is a magical place. It has films that you can’t find anywhere else.”

Diwan shot to fame in 2021 when she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for L’Événement (released internationally as Happening), based on French writer Annie Ernaux’s 2000 memoir of the same name. It chronicles the author’s experience of struggling to get an abortion in the 1960s. L’Événement captured the zeitgeist, sparking conversations about a topic that remains taboo for many. The decision to adapt the book at that moment now feels prescient. In 2022, less than four months after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade – the landmark ruling that had made abortion a constitutional right in America – Ernaux became the first French woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Then, in March 2024, France revised its 1958 constitution to enshrine the right to terminate a pregnancy as a guaranteed freedom.

Diwan’s deft ability to address societal issues originates, in part, from her work before film. She studied journalism and political science, and began her career as an editor at Éditions Denoël. She then worked at magazines such as Glamour and Stylist. She has also published several novels, including La Fabrication d’un mensonge (“The Making of a Lie”) and De l’autre côté de l’été (“On the Other Side of Summer”). Today she continues to write as well as direct. She recently worked on the screenplay for The Stronghold, a Cédric Jiménez-directed film about Marseille’s criminal underworld, as well as Valérie Donzelli’s romantic comedy Just the Two of Us.

In 2024, Diwan became one of 11 people selected to join France’s newly revamped Oscar selection committee. The overhaul came as the country sought to win an Academy Award in the best international feature category for the first time in more than 30 years. “Deciding on a film was a heavy weight on our shoulders,” says Diwan. “How do you know what the right choice is?” The committee eventually selected Emília Perez, a musical by Jacques Audiard, for this year’s awards. “Watching films and talking about them is my life,” she says. “Audiard is a giant of French cinema. To win best picture would be great but we would love to receive best international picture because it’s symbolic. Many filmmakers here deserve more attention.”

Diwan’s third directorial feature, Emmanuelle, is a remake of Just Jaeckin’s 1974 softcore hit, which was based on a book by Thai-French novelist Emmanuelle Arsan. Unlike Jaeckin’s version, Diwan presents her film from the titular character’s point of view, restoring Arsan’s focus on female agency. It’s a brave choice but Diwan doesn’t shy away from a challenge. “I despise the idea of comfort for an artist,” she says. “When I find the right project, I have to feel as much fear as desire. Those are my two essential ingredients.” She couldn’t finish watching Jaeckin’s film adaptation. “I obviously wasn’t the intended audience,” she says. In her reinterpretation, Noémie Merlant, known for Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Paris, 13th District, steps into the role of an older Emmanuelle who roams the halls of a luxury Hong Kong hotel in search of a way to reconnect with her lost sense of pleasure.

“When I read the book, I thought, ‘What is eroticism nowadays – does it still exist?’” says Diwan. She began to see the project as an opportunity to explore how young people relate to one another in the digital age. In many ways, Emmanuelle is a natural continuation of her work on L’Événement. Both films challenge cultural taboos about women’s rights, sexuality and the struggle to reclaim control over their bodies. “There is a strong feeling of shame in the films,” says Diwan. “I talk about bodies that are broken.” The making of Emmanuelle also shows how things are changing on French film sets in the wake of the MeToo movement. Diwan and Merlant worked with an intimacy co-ordinator, a role that is now common in Hollywood but is still new in France.

On-screen intimacy is frequently treated with a frustrating lack of nuance and Diwan is determined to change this. “I’ve read so many screenplays that simply state, ‘And then they have sex,’” she says. “That’s where the problem is. You would never say, ‘And then they have dinner.’ You would explain what’s going on during that dinner, what kind of interactions you expect.” Too often, she says, filmmakers avoid discussing these scenes with the cast and crew, which leads to improvisation. It’s a risky approach that can create superficial results or even dangerous situations. “When you don’t know what you’re looking for – when a scene is only included because you want to see people having sex – you’re in trouble,” she says.

Diwan thrives on films that spark meaningful discussions. “It’s always good to challenge people’s expectations,” she says. “Those are the journeys that I prefer when I’m in the audience. You can love it or hate it but a strong reaction means that you can have a conversation. An open discussion – that’s what cinema should be.” — L