Mathilde Bonnefoy

French editor and filmmaker Mathilde Bonnefoy rose to international acclaim through a series of critically acclaimed collaborations with German filmmakers Tom Twyker and Wim Wenders, which eventually led to work on the Oscar-winning documentary "Citizenfour" (2014). Born in Paris, France on March 11, 1972, Bonnefoy was the daughter of French poet Yves Bonnefoy and American actress Lucille Vines, which granted her dual citizenship. She initially studied philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1990 to 1991, but left the school to pursue a career as a film director in Berlin. She began her career as an assistant editor, becoming one of the first professionals in Berlin to learn the AVID editing system. Her proficiency served as introduction to another aspiring German filmmaker, Tom Twyker, who had helped several short films and one drama, "Deadly Maria," in 1993. Twyker hired Bonnefoy to provide AVID editing for "Das Leben ist eine Baustelle" ("Life is All You Get," 1997), a comedy co-written by Twyker and produced by his own company, X-Filme Creative Pool, before he returned to the director's chair for the kinetic thriller "Run Lola Run" (1998). A huge international hit, "Lola" won Bonnefoy a Deutsche Filmpreis - the German equivalent of the Academy Award - and led to a fruitful series of collaborations with Twyker, including "The Princess and the Warrior" (2000) and "Heaven" (2002). The following year, Bonnefoy launched her own directorial career with a music video for "Du Riecht So Gut," a single by the confrontational German electronic group Rammstein. She also began working with acclaimed German director Wim Wenders on an array of projects, including "The Soul of a Man" (PBS, 2003), a segment from Martin Scorsese's documentary series "The Blues" (PBS, 2003) about pioneering guitarist Blind Willie Johnson that won an Emmy for Cinematography that same year. From there, Bonnefoy edited several American productions, ranging from the independent horror film "Solstice" (2008) for director Daniel Myrick to Twyker's German-Hollywood co-production, "The International" (2009), with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. In 2014, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras began work on a documentary about National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Due to the complicated governmental issues regarding Snowden and his actions, the film required an editor outside of the United States; Poitras, who was a fan of Bonnefoy's work with Twyker, hired her to edit the picture. Bonnefoy and her husband, German producer/director Dirk Wilutzky, also became producers on the completed film, "Citizenfour," which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Features at the 2015 Oscar ceremony.