I Only Believe in Myself: Conversation with Murielle Joudet (Semiotext

by Catherine Breillat, Murielle Joudet, Christine Pichini (translator)

A long-form dialogue—on cinema and survival—with the visionary French filmmaker.

The virtuous always engage in a pseudoreligious morality. But there’s one thing they never the desire for pleasure is thought in motion. It’s what makes you transfigure a dull and repetitive sexual act into something that can bring you to ecstasy and an idea of eternity ...
—Catherine Breillat to Murielle Joudet

Catherine Breillat has always told just one her own, the story of a young girl whose existence was forbidden, who was, from childhood, cut in half, split between her mind and her sexuality, marked by the shame of being born female. She became a filmmaker at a time when choosing that vocation meant disobeying the world. 

During six months between September 2022 and March 2023, the film critic Murielle Joudet interviewed Catherine Breillat for thirty hours, often following up with further discussion over the phone. Joudet and Breillat discuss each of her films in chronological order, moving freely between Breillat’s cinematic vision, her life, and the situations, artworks, and thought that have inspired her films.

From A Real Young Girl (1975) to Last Summer (2023), Breillat has made films in an attempt to recover what she believes was stolen from her— the “unfilmable,” inexhaustible grey area of the feminine where shame, transgression, sensuality, disgust, and the search for oneself intertwine until they become indistinguishable. Her work proposes a haunting imperative to know oneself ... and for her heroines, this spiritual search plays out as an open war with the opposite sex. 

A conversation with Catherine Breillat is as much a cinema master class as it is a lesson in survival.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort. She decided to become a writer and director at the age of 12 after watching Ingmar Bergman's Gycklarnas afton, believing she had found her "'fictional body'" in Harriet Andersson's character, Anna. She started her career after studying acting at Yves Furet "Studio d'Entraînement de l'Acteur" in Paris together with her sister, actress Marie-Hélène Breillat (born 2 June 1947) in 1967. At the age of 17, she had her novel, l'Homme facile, (Easy Man) published. Ironically the French government banned it for readers under 18 years old.
Breillat is known for films focusing on sexuality, intimacy, gender conflict and sibling rivalry. Breillat has been the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. She cast the pornstar Rocco Siffredi in her films Romance (Romance X, 1999) and Anatomie de l'enfer (Anatomy of Hell, 2004). Her novels have been best-sellers.
Her work has been associated with the New French Extremity tendency.
In an interview with Senses of Cinema, she described David Cronenberg as another filmmaker she considers to have a similar approach to sexuality in film.
Though Breillat spends most of her time behind the camera, she has been in a handful of movies, making her film debut in 1972 as Mouchette in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.
In 2004, Breillat suffered a stroke.
A friend of hers, Christophe Rocancourt, a con artist, was to play a role in the upcoming film "Bad Love". However, in 2009 she accused him of taking advantage of her handicap by embezzling €650,000. Breillat documented the incident in her book, published in 2009, called "Abus de faiblesse" (Abuse of Weakness).
As of 2010, Breillat is almost fully recovered from her stroke and still intends to film Bad Love with Naomi Campbell in a lead role. Departing from her native French, Breillat plans for the dialogue in the movie to be in both English and Chinese. In September 2010, Breillat's second fairy-tale based film, Sleeping Beauty (La belle endormie), will open in the Orizzonti sidebar in the 67th Venice Film Festival.

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I practice "know thyself" in all of my films. I'm not ashamed to know every kind of depravity, I'm familiar with it. I don't glory in it, but I know that it exists: you can love something that you're ashamed of, things you don't want to shout from the rooftops. Because that's what life is, that's what it means to live and to have an awareness of it. Otherwise, you die without ever having encountered yourself. . .
I want to see what I am, and make others see.

I appreciate Breillats philosophies in all their brutality, even when it feels like her 'feminism' lacks intersectionality. Her conviction is an incitement.

[Courtney DeVita · Rating 5 out of 5]

required reading

[Lola Stocking · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 some really interesting high starring bits at the start but just didn’t really care about a lot of the stuff she was talking about. That’s a me problem though

[Vanity Celis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent tell-all by an artist who is passionate about her art, and I could have had more of it.