Marthe Keller (Basel, Switzerland) is the example of an artist who knows no geographical or artistic
borders. Her first passion was dance. She studied theatre at the Stanislavsky school in Munich for
three years, was a part of the Schiller Theatre in Berlin and, later, made her first appearance on
German television.
In 1966, Keller moved to Paris, where she began her career in cinema alongside Philippe de Broca, in the films Le Diable pour le queue/The Devil By the Tail (1969) and Les Caprices de Marie (1970), and Claude Lelouch in the film Toute une Vie/And Now My Love (1974).
She rapidly gains international renown making her debut in Hollywood in John Schlesinger’s The Marathon Man in 1976 alongside Dustin Hoffman. She also participated in Fedora by Billy Wilder, presented at the Cannes Festival in 1978.
Her versatility makes her move easily from light comedy to drama, from romance to thriller, working with great directors such as Sydney Pollack, Nikita Mikhalkov, John Frankenheimer and, more recently, Benoît Jacquot and Barbet Schroeder.
Mathe Keller’s talent is evident in everything she undertakes in film but also in her stage performances and even in opera: her stage direction of Francis Poulenc's Dialogue des Carmélites won the Grand Prix de la Critique in 1999.
Keller is a frequent presence at the Cannes Festival and, in 1994, was the president of the Jury in the section Caméra d’Or and president of the Jury in the section Un Certain Regard in 2016. This year, she is also a member of the Official Selection Competition Jury at the Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival.