Legendary auteur Claire Denis returned to the New York Film Festival this year with a feature that is as slippery, sensuous, and acridly political as her best work. Adapted from an English-language translation of Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play Black Battles with Dogs, The Fence stars Denis regular Isaach de Bankolé as a man demanding the body of his brother, who died in a work accident on a construction site in West Africa, resulting in a precariously civil confrontation with the development’s foreman (Matt Dillon) that threatens to erupt into something darker.

NYFF was proud to welcome Denis for a conversation about her iconoclastic, boundary-pushing career, her approach to adapting a work from stage to screen, and her new film’s unflinching indictment of Europe’s colonial past and present, moderated by filmmaker Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, NYFF54; If Beale Street Could Talk, NYFF56), who served as an executive producer for The Fence. 

The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Claire Denis and Barry Jenkins. Photo by Arin Sang-urai.