In 2001, Claire Denis shocked audiences at the Cannes Film Festival with Trouble Every Day, a bloody genre exercise featuring enfants terrible Vincent Gallo and Béatrice Dalle. Gallo plays Shane, an American doctor who travels to Paris to seek his former paramour Coré, played by Dalle. The mysterious Coré escapes her husband’s domestic confinement every day to find sex with strangers, and she ends each encounter by murdering them. Shane feels an irresistible urge to reunite with her despite the danger ahead. The biggest shock in this unconventional vampire film is not the gore, but rather Denis’s ability to dive into the visceral nature of the characters’ desire to connect and destroy. Rock band Tindersticks perfects Trouble Every Day’s haunting soundscape in their second collaboration with the French filmmaker.

Claire Denis (b. 1946, France) began her career working on set in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie (1974). Her years working alongside Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch were crucial to her growth as a filmmaker before she directed her debut Chocolat (1988). Her next films I Can’t Sleep (1994) and Nénette et Boni (1996) interweave narratives inspired by the urban culture of Paris. Denis’s elliptical narrative and visual style received widespread acclaim with Beau Travail (1999) while Trouble Every Day (2001) made a shocking presentation in which Denis, regarded as an arthouse director, turned to the horror genre. The 2000s were significant for her career, which saw the release of Friday Night (2002), 35 Shots of Rum (2008), and White Material (2009). In 2022, Both Sides of the Blade and Stars at Noon won prizes at the Berlinale and Cannes respectively. Working closely with her long-time collaborators, such as cinematographer Agnès Godard and the rock band Tindersticks, Denis has contributed a diverse body of work to contemporary cinema.