Philippe Grandrieux was born in 1954 in France. He studied movies at the INSAS (Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle) in Brussels and started his career as a moviemaker by shooting fictional films and documentaries. Grandrieux then worked as an experimental filmmaker in Belgium where he exhibited his video works at local museums. Since the eighties, he has been working in collaboration with the French Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) where he has been inventing new cinematographic forms and formats that put into question central notions in film writing: for instance the notions of documentary, information and film essay. In 1990, he created the film research lab “Live” which produced one hour long sequences by Thierry Kuntzel, Robert Kramer and Robert Frank. He also taught movies from time to time at la FEMIS (Fondation Européenne pour les Métiers de l’Image et du Son) and at l’Ecole à l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts (Paris).
His uncompromised vision of Art, leads him to push the boundaries of the cinematographic fields he is working on. As a consequence, he is always producing an inventive and radical cinema. His first two full-feature movies Sombre (which won an award at the Locarno Film Festival) and La Vie Nouvelle (A New Life) are exemplar of Grandrieux’s creativity in photography, sound and narration. Grandrieux’s films, deriving from horror movies and experimental movies, give the viewer intense sensorial experiences. His work has been influenced by the work of Edmond Bernhard, his teacher at the INSAS, Murnau, Robert Bresson, Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Stan Brakhage and also by his readings of Marc-Aurèle, Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze’s work.