--- name: "Céline Sciamma" canonical: "https://film.one/person/celine-sciamma" fi1m_id: "celine-sciamma" imdb_id: "nm1780037" tmdb_id: 68813 wikidata_id: "Q461350" roles: ["Writer","Director"] born: "12 November 1978" reviewed_on_fi1m: 3 average_as: "writer" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-30T21:01:12.868505+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Céline Sciamma ## Identity Céline Sciamma - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/celine-sciamma - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** celine-sciamma - **IMDb ID:** nm1780037 - **TMDB ID:** 68813 - **Wikidata ID:** Q461350 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9line_Sciamma, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461350, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1780037/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/68813 Writer and director. Born 12 November 1978 in Pontoise, Val-d'Oise, France. ## Details - **Work:** Writer, Director - **Born:** 12 November 1978, Pontoise, Val-d'Oise, France - **Active:** 2016–present - **Also known as:** 셀린 시아마, 瑟琳·席安玛 - **Titles on Fi1m:** 3: 2 directing, 1 writing - **Frequently works with:** [Bénédicte Couvreur](https://film.one/person/benedicte-couvreur.md) - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 86 (2), 2020s 88 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9line_Sciamma, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q461350, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1780037/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/68813 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*Portrait of a Lady on Fire*](https://film.one/film/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire.md) (89) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Céline Sciamma > Céline Sciamma writes and directs films in which two people look at each other and the audience is trusted to work out what the looking means. Nobody explains, there is rarely music, and the results have moved us more than most films twice as busy. In *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* (2019) a painter studies the woman she is painting, and the woman studies her back. For a long stretch that is the whole film, and it holds. Sciamma, who wrote it as well as directed it, does not have anyone say what is passing between Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel; she lets us notice before they do. It is her habit in everything she makes. In *Petite Maman* (2021) an eight-year-old meets a girl in the woods who has her mother's name and her own face, and the film declines to treat this as a mystery. It is simply what happens next. She trained at La Fémis, and her first feature, *Water Lilies* (2007), was written as her graduation project. With *Tomboy* (2011) and *Girlhood* (2014) it forms a loose run of coming-of-age films, mostly about girls in the French suburbs, often with young or non-professional casts. Then she moved indoors and back in time. *Portrait* and *Petite Maman* are quieter and more controlled, cast with professionals, and some observers miss the rougher edges of the early work. We do not, much. Between her own films she writes for other directors: *Being 17* (2016), the stop-motion *My Life as a Zucchini* (2016), *Paris, 13th District* (2021) with Jacques Audiard, and *The Balconettes* (2024). What she does best is write children without condescension. Her script for *Zucchini* gives the children in Claude Barras's film interests beyond being unhappy and lets them be blunt about things the adults cannot name. *Petite Maman* opens in a care home corridor, Nelly saying goodbye to old women who are not her grandmother, and then moves to a car, where the child leans through from the back seat, feeds her mother crisps and puts her arms round her neck. We were undone by that, not ten minutes in, and nothing in the scene asked for it. Sciamma had let a girl be kind and watched. The control has a cost. *Portrait* takes so long to let an acquaintance become intimate that the restraint can feel managed rather than felt, and *Petite Maman* is so exactly built that you can sometimes see the joins. She often does without a conventional score, using silence or a piece of existing music; when she does want a composer it is usually Para One, who has worked with her five times, as Haenel has three and the cinematographer Crystel Fournier three. The silences are where her films do their best work, and where an impatient viewer will give up. She said of *Portrait*, "I wanted a love story with equality," and that is the thread through all of it: a painter and her subject, a girl and her mother at eight, given the same weight and the same share of the frame. Her most recent credit is a script for someone else. We would like the next one to be hers. ## Biography Céline Sciamma is a French filmmaker. She was born on 12 November 1978 in Pontoise, Val-d'Oise, and studied screenwriting at La Fémis from 2001 to 2005. Her debut feature *Water Lilies* (2007) originated as her graduation project; Xavier Beauvois, who chaired the evaluation panel, encouraged her to direct it. She has since directed and written *Tomboy* (2011), *Girlhood* (2014), *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* (2019) and *Petite Maman* (2021). Sciamma also wrote the screenplay for the animated film *My Life as a Zucchini* (2016) and contributed to other projects including *Paris, 13th District* (2021). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, vanityfair.com, criterion.com.* ## On Fi1m (3) ### Directed (2) - *Petite Maman* (2021), Fi1m 88, Costume Designer, Writer, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/petite-maman.md) - *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* (2019), Fi1m 89, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire.md) ### Wrote (1) — the average rests on these - *My Life as a Zucchini* (2016), Fi1m 84, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/my-life-as-a-zucchini.md) ## Complete filmography (19) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Tutti Frutti* (2026), Director, Cinematography, Original Music Composer, Songs - *The Balconettes* (2024), Writer - *This Is How a Child Becomes a Poet* (2023), Director, Writer - *Paris, 13th District* (2021), Writer - *Petite Maman* (2021), Costume Designer, Director, Writer — Fi1m 88, [page](https://film.one/film/petite-maman.md) - *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* (2019), Director, Screenplay — Fi1m 89, [page](https://film.one/film/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire.md) - *With the Wind* (2018), Writer - *La Coupe Bernard Tapine* (2018), Writer, Director, Director of Photography - *My Life as a Zucchini* (2016), Screenplay — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/my-life-as-a-zucchini.md) - *Being 17* (2016), Writer - *Young Tiger* (2015), Script Consultant - *Girlhood* (2014), Costume Designer, Director, Writer - *Mademoiselle* (2014), as Fille boîte - *Bird People* (2014), Script Consultant - *Tomboy* (2011), Director, Writer - *Ivory Tower* (2010), Writer - *Pauline* (2009), Director - *Water Lilies* (2007), as Caissier de McDonald's (uncredited) · Director, Screenplay - *Brume*, Screenplay ## Gallery - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-7ff8be841225.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/C%C3%A9line_Sciamma_Lumi%C3%A8res_2015.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Actress, Adèle Haenel, and film director, Céline Sciamma, at a screening of their 2019 film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu). (2020)](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-973d953388e9.jpg) Actress, Adèle Haenel, and film director, Céline Sciamma, at a screening of their 2019 film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu). (2020) — Love, to live *, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Ad%C3%A8le_Haenel_and_Celine_Sciamma.jpg/1280px-Ad%C3%A8le_Haenel_and_Celine_Sciamma.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Manifestation pour l'égalité salariale et la parité dans le cinéma, organisée pendant le festival de Cannes (2018)](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-dda0b7ff8f65.jpg) Manifestation pour l'égalité salariale et la parité dans le cinéma, organisée pendant le festival de Cannes (2018) — Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Cannes_2018_11.jpg/1280px-Cannes_2018_11.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Céline Sciamma at the Teddy Award 2026](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-8f92c48a58e6.jpg) Céline Sciamma at the Teddy Award 2026 — UlrikeZimmermann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Celine_Sciamma_Teddy_2026-4200.jpg/1280px-Celine_Sciamma_Teddy_2026-4200.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-79f9268b6162.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Image via TMDB - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-08a91f5a3484.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Image via TMDB - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-bd14a9b4587d.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Image via TMDB - ![Céline Sciamma, Karidja Touré et Mariétou Touré lors d'une projection de la version alternative de "Bande de filles" au MK2 Bibliothèque, le 6 juin 2026.](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-a6831487b5c8.jpg) Céline Sciamma, Karidja Touré et Mariétou Touré lors d'une projection de la version alternative de "Bande de filles" au MK2 Bibliothèque, le 6 juin 2026. — ManoSolo13241324, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/C%C3%A9line_Sciamma%2C_Karidja_Tour%C3%A9_et_Mari%C3%A9tou_Tour%C3%A9_2026.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Céline Sciamma, Pauline Acquart et Louise Blachère présentant "Naissance des pieuvres" au MK2 Bibliothèque, le 7 juin 2026.](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-679276bd570b.jpg) Céline Sciamma, Pauline Acquart et Louise Blachère présentant "Naissance des pieuvres" au MK2 Bibliothèque, le 7 juin 2026. — ManoSolo13241324, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/C%C3%A9line_Sciamma%2C_Pauline_Acquart_et_Louise_Blach%C3%A8re_2026.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-9dd604c68116.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Image via TMDB - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-8d6f7dc4880e.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Image via TMDB - ![Céline Sciamma](https://film.one/media/person/130405/gallery-c6cdd566d5dc.jpg) Céline Sciamma — Image via TMDB ## Awards ### Other awards — 6 won, 3 nominated - Officer of Arts and Letters 2022: Officer of Arts and Letters (won) - European Film Award for Best Director 2019: European Film Award for Best Director (nominated), for *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* - European Film Award for Best Screenwriter 2019: European Film Award for Best Screenwriter (won), for *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* - European University Film Award 2019: European University Film Award (won), for *Portrait of a Lady on Fire* - European Film Academy Young Audience Award 2017: European Film Academy Young Audience Award (nominated), for *My Life as a Zucchini* - European Film Award for Best Animated Feature Film 2016: European Film Award for Best Animated Feature Film (won), for *My Life as a Zucchini* - Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres 2015: Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (won) - Lumière Special Jury Prize 2015: Lumière Special Jury Prize (won), for *Girlhood* - César Award for Best First Film 2008: César Award for Best First Film (nominated), for *Water Lilies* *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/celine-sciamma