Sandrine Kiberlain

Origins and early life

Sandrine Kiberlain was born at Boulogne-Billancourt on 25 February 1968, and all four of her grandparents were Polish Jews; the family reached France in 1933, and her paternal grandfather made the name French, from Kiberlejn to Kiberlain, during the war.

Work and career

She was trained at the Conservatoire in Paris and won the César for most promising actress in 1996 for Laetitia Masson's En avoir (ou pas), the first of a run of parts built on a very particular hesitancy of voice. She won the César for best actress in 2014 for Albert Dupontel's comedy 9 mois ferme, and has worked with Jacques Audiard, Stéphane Brizé in Mademoiselle Chambon, and Bertrand Tavernier. In 2022 she directed her first feature, Une jeune fille qui va bien, about an eighteen-year-old Jewish girl in Paris who wants to act and to live while the summer of 1942 closes around her; Kiberlain has said she made it out of the family history she grew up beside.

The film was chosen to open Critics' Week at Cannes and brought her a César nomination for best first feature. She is also a singer, and has recorded three albums of her own songs.