Claire Denis on Being a Female Filmmaker in Cannes: It Is “Hard for Men and Women to Make Films, But It Is Harder for Women”

After multiple delays due to COVID-19 and major production upheavals,

including moving the shoot from Nicaragua to Panama,

Claire Denis and the cast of Stars at Noon, Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn,

took the stage at the Cannes Film Festival to present the competition title, an adaptation of the Denis Johnson novel.

Unlike Johnson’s novel, which is set in Nicaragua in 1984

American woman who gets caught up in the Sandinista civil war,

Denis made Stars at Noon as a contemporary romantic thriller.

She explained that when the production was forced to move from Nicaragua to Panama

“for security reasons and sanitary reasons when