Juliet Berto

Juliet Berto, born Annie Lucienne Marie Louise Jamet on 16 January 1947 in Grenoble, France, emerged from a turbulent post‑war generation of student radicals alongside contemporaries such as Anne Wiazemsky. Her first screen appearance came in Jean‑Luc Godard’s experimental feature Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), where she delivered a fleeting yet memorable line that caught the director’s attention and launched a long‑standing collaboration. Godard continued to cast her in a string of seminal New Wave works, including La Chinoise, Week End, Le Gai Savoir and Vladimir et Rosa, allowing Berto to explore politically charged characters that mirrored her own activist background. In these films she often portrayed young women caught between ideology and personal desire, embodying the restless energy of the late‑1960s French cinema.

In the early 1970s she became a muse for another French auteur, Jacques Rivette, starring in the eight‑hour epic Out 1 and the whimsical Céline and Julie Go Boating, performances that cemented her status as a chameleon‑like presence on screen and earned her a reputation as a daring improvisational actress. Transitioning behind the camera in the 1980s, Berto co‑directed Neige (1981) and Cap Canaille (1983) with Jean‑Henri Roger, films praised by critic Jean Douchet for their vibrant, tense, rebellious yet joyful tone. Cap Canaille was selected for the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival, and Berto herself served on the jury of the 37th Berlin Festival in 1987, underscoring her growing influence in European cinema. As a screenwriter she contributed scripts that explored marginalised voices, and her later directorial work, such as Havre (1986) and the documentary Damia : concert en velours noir (1989), displayed a persistent interest in personal freedom and social critique. Tragically, her prolific career was cut short when she succumbed to breast cancer on 10 January 1990 at the age of 42, leaving behind a legacy of daring performances and bold direction that continue to inspire new generations of filmmakers and affirm her place in the annals of French New Wave and feminist cinema.