Miu Miu has named acclaimed French filmmaker and screenwriter Claire Denis as director of the 32nd chapter of its Miu Miu Women’s Tale series. Titled Avec Kim, the short film premieres on September 5th, 2026 during the Venice Film Festival, extending the house’s enduring conversation between fashion, cinema and women’s voices.
Claire Denis and a cinema of desire, distance and sensation
Born in Paris in 1946 and raised partly in colonial French Africa, Denis developed a cinematic language shaped by sensuality, silence and physical presence. Her films often let gestures, bodies and landscapes speak beyond dialogue, from Chocolat (1988) and Beau Travail (1999) to High Life (2018), starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche.
Her recent films include Both Sides of the Blade and Stars at Noon (2022), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, followed by The Fence (2025). Across her work, Denis returns to desire, alienation, race and intimacy, allowing physical sensation and ambiguity to carry as much weight as narrative.
A new Miu Miu Women’s Tale
Launched in 2011, the Miu Miu Women’s Tale series grew from Miuccia Prada’s longstanding passion for cinema. Each chapter gives a female filmmaker the freedom to interpret Miu Miu through her own visual language, turning fashion into a meeting point for distinct cinematic voices.
With Avec Kim, Denis joins directors including Agnès Varda, Alice Rohrwacher, Miranda July, Joanna Hogg, Alice Diop, Dakota Fanning and Chloë Sevigny. In 2023, Miu Miu established the Women’s Tales Committee to further strengthen the series and support emerging filmmakers, with members including Miuccia Prada, Ava DuVernay, Catherine Martin and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
For Denis, cinema has always been a way of resisting certainty. “Making films for me is to get rid of explanation. It is a journey into the impossible,” she has said.
