One of France’s most distinctive and highly regarded directors, Alain Resnais was born in Vannes, France, in 1922.  He studied at L`Institut hautes études cinématographiques before starting a career as a film-maker in the mid-1940s, making short films.  Of these, the most celebrated is Nuit et brouillard (1955), an eye-opening and devastatingly poignant documentary about deportations and Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

Resnais’ first full-length film was Hiroshima mon amour (1959), an unusual romantic drama which was developed from an idea for a short documentary.  The film was critically acclaimed in France and abroad and won Resnais instant fame, establishing him as a major director of the French New Wave.  His following film, L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961), was no less successful, a remarkable interplay of time and memory with some unforgettable visual imagery.

The cinema of Alain Resnais has always been challenging the boundaries and our assumptions of what cinema should be about, perhaps more successfully than any other director.  Although some of his films are highly artistic, abstract and inaccessible, others have won notable mainstream success.  Few directors have achieved this degree of diversity whilst pursuing an extraordinarily artistic vision of cinema.  Alain Resnais' work is challenging, mysterious and often entertaining, but it is also remarkably coherent, showing a keen appreciation of human issues whilst exposing a creative force of great talent and daring.