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,

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including moving the shoot from Nicaragua to Panama,

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

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

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

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

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Denis made Stars at Noon as a contemporary romantic thriller.

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

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“for security reasons and sanitary reasons when

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