A founder and leading light of the French New Wave (his 1958 Le Beau Serge is often cited as the film that kicked the whole thing off) and dubbed the ‘French Hitchcock’, Claude Chabrol’s career spanned some 50 years and 80+ films. Perhaps the least celebrated filmmaker to emerge from that movement, it’s arguable he was the most important.  

Often mining similar territory to those literary greats Georges Simenon, Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell, it’s no surprise whatsoever that he eventually adapted work from all three of them. It’s no great surprise either that such important contemporary filmmakers as Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook cite him as a key influence on their work. 

The BFI re-release of La femme infidèle (recently remade by Russian master filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev as Cannes 2026 competition entry Minotaur) has inspired our short season, as we focus primarily on the incredible run of murderous, bourgeois-skewering, delightfully wicked thrillers (1969-1973) that began with it - with some gender-bent Patricia Highsmith capers in Les Biches from the year before thrown in for good measure.

Many thanks to our friends at BFI Southbank for making this season possible.