French director, screenwriter and producer born in Paris in 1942, Claude Miller spent his entire childhood and youth in the city of Montreuil, where he studied and met his wife, film producer Annie Miller. A movie buff since adolescence, he would escape at every opportunity to the Le Trianon Romainville picture house, where he discovered his first movies in cinemascope. His vocation became clear when, on achieving his High School Certificate, he passed the entrance exam to the IDHEC, where he graduated in Directing in 1965. He was assistant director for some of the biggest filmmakers of the time: Marcel Carné in Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965), Michel Deville in Martin Soldat (1966), Jean-Luc Godard in Week end (1967).

From 1968 to 1975 he was production director on all of the films made by Truffaut, one of his best friends. He similarly launched his career as a director with a few short films, the first of which was entitled Juliet dans Paris. His first feature film, La meilleure façon de marcher (The Best Way to Walk, 1975), starring Patrick Dewaere, won a César in 1976. From then until 1987, when he founded with his wife the production company Les Films de la Boissière, he made four movies: Dites-lui que je l’aime (1977), adaptation of a novel by Patricia Highsmith, with Depardieu and Miou Miou; Garde à vue (1981), with Romy Schneider, Mortelle randonnée (1982), with Isabelle Adjani; and L’effrontée (Impudent Girl), winner of the Louis Delluc award in 1985.

His first film with his own production company was La petite voleuse (The Little Thief, 1988), based on a script by François Truffaut, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg. In 1992, he directed L’accompagnatrice, a film which saw the joint collaboration of Richard Bohringer and his daughter Romane, and in 1994 Le sourire (The Smile), with Jean-Pierre Marielle. La classe de neige (1998) was awarded the Grand Prix by the Jury at Cannes, and in 1999 La chambre des magiciennes (Of Women and Magic) landed the FIPRESCI Award at Berlin Festival. His two latest works, Betty Fisher et autres histoires (Betty Fisher and Other Stories, 2001) and La petite Lili (Little Lili, 2003), have won prizes at different international festivals. If anything characterizes his work as a director it is the attention he pays to the work of the actors. He has worked with some of the best French actors in the last twenty years: Michel Serrault, Nicole Garcia, the Segnier sisters, Emmanuelle and Mathilde, Julie Depardieu, Ludivine Sagnier… From 1998 until 1999, Claude Miller was President of the ARP. He is currently the President of Europa Cinéma and a member of the SACD Film Commission.