# Éric Gautier

Éric Gautier (born 2 April 1961) is a French cinematographer. He has received numerous accolades for his work, including a César Award for Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train and an Independent Spirit Award for The Motorcycle Diaries.

## Early life

Gautier was born and raised in Paris; he grew up in its eleventh, twelfth, nineteenth and twentieth arrondissements with his construction engineer father, mother, and younger sister. During his youth he excelled in music, and from the age of eleven played the piano and organ. He originally aspired to become a professional musician before becoming disillusioned with the field and deciding to pursue a career in cinema instead, which he felt combined many different creative pursuits. He attended the film school of the Louis Lumière College.

## Career

After graduating from the Louis Lumière film school [fr] in 1982, Gautier began work as an assistant camera operator director on Alain Resnais's film Life Is a Bed of Roses. He left the job soon after, however, and chose instead to work as the director of photography on short films. He shot 60 films before returning to feature film work. The first feature-length film he photographed was La Vie des morts, released in 1991 and directed by Arnaud Desplechin. He won a César Award for his cinematography on Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998), and received nominations for his work on Sentimental Destinies (2000), Clean (2004), Gabrielle (2005), Private Fears in Public Places (2006), and A Christmas Tale (2008). He has worked on many other French films, collaborating most often with Resnais and the directors Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, and Claude Berri.
Gautier began working in the international film in the early 2000s, beginning with The Motorcycle Diaries, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography and the 2004 Cannes Film Festival Technical Grand Prize, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography. After seeing The Motorcycle Diaries, American actor/filmmaker Sean Penn approached Gautier to shoot the 2007 film Into the Wild, for which he won a Lumière Award. He subsequently served as director of photography on the American films Taking Woodstock (2009) and Grace of Monaco (2014).

## Filmography
### Film

| Year | Title | Director | Note |
| 1991 | La Vie des morts | Arnaud Desplechin | |
| 1994 | The Favourite Son | Nicole Garcia | |
| 1995 | One Hundred and One Nights | Agnès Varda | |
| 1996 | Irma Vep | Olivier Assayas | |
| 1996 | Tykho Moon | Enki Bilal | |
| 1998 | Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train | Patrice Chéreau | César Award for Best Cinematography |
| 1999 | Pola X | Leos Carax | |
| 2000 | Esther Kahn | Arnaud Desplechin | |
| 2001 | Intimacy | Patrice Chéreau | |
| 2001 | Brief Crossing | Catherine Breillat | |
| 2001 | Savage Souls | Raúl Ruiz | |
| 2003 | His Brother | Patrice Chéreau | |
| 2004 | The Motorcycle Diaries | Walter Salles | Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography |
| 2004 | Clean | Olivier Assayas | |
| 2004 | Kings and Queen | Arnaud Desplechin | |
| 2006 | Paris, Je T’Aime | Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas; Olivier Assayas | Segments, "Loin du 16ème", "Quartier des Enfants Rouges" |
| 2006 | Noise | Olivier Assayas | Documentary |
| 2006 | A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints | Dito Montiel | |
| 2006 | Quelques veuves de Noirmoutier | Agnès Varda | Documentary |
| 2006 | Private Fears in Public Places | Alain Resnais | |
| 2007 | Into the Wild | Sean Penn | |
| 2008 | Summer Hours | Olivier Assayas | |
| 2008 | A Christmas Tale | Arnaud Desplechin | |
| 2009 | Wild Grass | Alain Resnais | |
| 2009 | Taking Woodstock | Ang Lee | |
| 2010 | Miral | Julian Schnabel | |
| 2012 | On the Road | Walter Salles | |
| 2012 | You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet | Alain Resnais | |
| 2012 | Something in the Air | Olivier Assayas | |
| 2014 | Grace of Monaco | Olivier Dahan | |
| 2015 | Hitchcock/Truffaut | Kent Jones | Co-cinematographer with five others |
| 2015 | Aloha | Cameron Crowe | |
| 2015 | Rabin, the Last Day | Amos Gitai | Docudrama |
| 2017 | The Elephant and the Butterfly | Amélie van Elmbt | |
| 2017 | The Mercy | James Marsh | |
| 2018 | The Apparition | Xavier Giannoli | |
| 2018 | Ash is Purest White | Jia Zhangke | |
| 2018 | A Tramway in Jerusalem | Amos Gitai | |
| 2019 | The Truth | Hirokazu Koreeda | |
| 2022 | Both Sides of the Blade | Claire Denis | |
| 2022 | Stars at Noon | Claire Denis | |

### Short films

| Year | Title | Director | Note |
| 1997 | Sans Titre | Leos Carax | |
| 2014 | Incident Urbain | John Lalor |

### Television

| Year | Title | Director | Note |
| 1994 | Personne ne m'aime | Marion Vernoux | Television film |
| 1994 | Travolta and Me | Patricia Mazuy | Television film Part of the "All the Boys and Girls of Their Age" anthology |

## Personal life

Gautier was married until 1995, when his wife Valentine died from cancer at the age of 32. His current partner is Nathalie Boutefeu, an actress with whom he has two daughters, Suzanne and Angela.