We’re proud to announce that Claire Simon will receive this year’s True Vision Award in honor of her achievement in and contribution to the field of nonfiction filmmaking.

True Vision is the only award given out at the fest. Simon is the 14th recipient of this honor. Last year, the award was given to Iranian director Mehrdad Oskouei. Other winners of the True Vision Award include Laura Poitras (2010), James Marsh (2011), and Adam Curtis (2015).

 

 

Simon will be appearing at the fest with her newest film, The Graduation, as well as a selection of her previous work. The Graduation observes a team of judges interviewing prospective candidates to La Fémis, France’s most prestigious film school. A former instructor at the school, Simon gained unguarded access to heated behind-the-scenes debates, which she captures with characteristic grace and insight.

Of The Graduation, True/False senior programmer Chris Boeckmann says, “Claire tends to focus on small-scale stories, but they invariably resonate in grand ways. She is both attuned to the poetry of everyday gestures and the large societal forces that shape our behavior.”

 

 

Simon, a French director born in London who began as an editor, will be making her first appearance at True/False. She has made a dozen features in a 30-year career playing at the line between documentary and fiction.

In her startling 1992 breakthrough, Récréations (also featured at T/F), Simon embeds with a class of young children. Her camera studies their dynamics during recess, the only time of the day they exert autonomy. Simon finds genuine drama here plus some primal truths.

The idiosyncratic path Simon has followed since Récréations is full of unpredictable, exhilarating turns.

In Coûte que Coûte (1995), Simon rooted the cutthroat capitalist world in the struggle of a man trying to keep a catering business afloat. Simon has also mined her own life: her daughter’s love travails in 800 km de différence / Romance (2001) as well as a friend reflecting back on her life in the ambling masterpiece Mimi (2002), also playing at T/F. Constructed from seven years of real-life dialogue collected by Simon, God’s Offices (2008) features celebrated actors as family-planning counselors.

 

The award is given with support from Restoration Eyecare. The award is designed and cast in bronze by local Mid-Missouri artist Larry Young.