Established in 2020, the Robby Müller Award honors outstanding lifetime achievements in cinematography. Rotterdam has previously bestowed this prestigious award upon Diego García (Mexico), Kelly Reichardt (USA) and Sayombu Mukdeeprom (Thailand), and is now focusing on France, at least on paper. For while she may hail from the country that birthed the cinematograph, Hélène Louvart is a veritable globetrotter when it comes to her work and recurring collaborations.
Most notably, she has been the regular D.P. of Alice Rohrwacher since the Italian director’s feature debut Corpo celeste (2011), and their most recent undertaking, the short film Le pupille (2022), is currently up for an Oscar. Other major international collaborations include American director Eliza Hittman, for whom Louvart created the images for Beach Rats (2017) and Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), and Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, who enlisted her services for Invisible Life (2019) and the upcoming Firebrand, an ambitious period drama about Katherine Parr, the final wife of Henry VIII (with Alicia Vikander and Jude Law playing the two leads).
And then, of course, there’s Wim Wenders, whose Pina (2011) remains one of the few truly memorable 3D achievements. This is thanks to Louvart’s eye, which made the third dimension an
integral part of the German director’s tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch, rather than just a commercial gimmick. A sentiment shared by the jury of the Camerimage festival, which
specializes in cinematography, and awarded her the prize for the best 3D documentary (beating Peter Zeitlinger for Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams).
Always striving for something unique with each project, Louvart’s lighting makes every film look like a distinct entity, while relating to the director’s previous work. It’s a skill that has allowed her to contribute in an indelible manner to the careers of masters like Agnès Varda (The Beaches of Agnès, 2008) and Larry Clark (The Smell of Us, 2014), as well as emerging talents such as Leonardo Di Costanzo (The Intruder, 2017), Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter, 2021) and Klaudia Reynicke (The Nest, 2016). This is true of her most recent undertaking, due to premiere in the main
competition at the Berlinale next month: Disco Boy, the feature debut of Giacomo Abbruzzese, a drama about the Foreign Legion starring Franz Rogowski, the German talent who, much like Louvart, has become synonymous with a career that remains tied to his country of origin while frequently and successfully branching out on the global arthouse stage.
And in light of Robby Müller’s own professional experiences, which led him from his native Netherlands to frequent work in Germany (Wim Wenders), Denmark (Lars von Trier)
and the United States (Jim Jarmusch), it is very fitting that the award named after him be given to a similarly universal yet singular talent like Hélène Louvart.
–Max Borg
