Bonnefoy was born in Paris, and is the daughter of the French poet Yves Bonnefoy and Lucy Vines, an American; she has dual citizenship in France and the United States. From 1990 to 1991 she studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, but she abandoned her studies to move to Berlin. By 1995 she was working as an assistant editor, and in 1997 she was credited as the "Avid assistant" for the German film Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (directed by Wolfgang Becker).[1]
Das Leben ist eine Baustelle was one of the first films produced by the film company X Filme Creative Pool, which was created by Becker and Tom Tykwer (among others).[2] Tykwer, who was the screenwriter for Das Leben ..., recruited Bonnefoy as the editor of Run Lola Run (1998), which he was directing. This film enjoyed international critical and box office success. It garnered Bonnefoy a Deutscher Filmpreis (the Academy Awards of Germany) for editing, as well as the ACE Eddie nomination.
Since Run Lola Run, Bonnefoy has edited several more films with Tykwer and with the director Wim Wenders. Her editing of Tykwer's film Three (2010) won her a second Deutscher Filmpreis. In recent years she has also directed and edited films for German television.
Bonnefoy is credited as both the editor and as a producer for the 2014 documentary Citizenfour that was directed by Laura Poitras. She earned Cinema Eye Honors for outstanding achievement in editing[3] and the ACE Eddie Award for best edited documentary feature.[4] She shared Citizenfour's Best Documentary Oscar with her fellow producers Laura Poitras and Dirk Wilutzky,[5] and was nominated for a third Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Editing for that film.[6]
In June 2015, Bonnefoy was announced as one of the 322 invitees to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that year. She was invited by both the Documentary branch, for her work on Citizenfour and Invisibles; and by the Film Editing branch, for her work on Citizenfour and Run Lola Run. The seven invitees who received invitations from multiple branches must select one branch on accepting membership. New members will be welcomed into the Academy at a closed reception in September 2015.[7]
Filmography
This filmography of editing credits is based on the listing at the Internet Movie Database;[8] the director of each film is indicated in parentheses.
Macaulay, Scott (October 14, 2014). "Positive Trauma: Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy on CITIZENFOUR". Filmmaker. In this interview, Bonnefoy describes how she was chosen by Laura Poitras to edit and jointly produce Citizenfour (2014). The editing of the film was done in Germany to avoid the possibility of government interference if it were done in the US. In addition, the editing was done with an extraordinary degree of electronic security.
Dunks, Glenn (December 6, 2014). "Team FYC: Citizenfour for Editing". The Film Experience. It's a work of art to see Bonnefoy and Poitras so expertly know when to show us glimpses of Snowden's rapidly claustrophobic world (the hair gel sequence!) and when to pull back and reveal the bigger picture. An argument that the editing of Citizenfour was worthy of recognition by Oscar voters in addition to the film's Best Documentary nominations and awards. This article notes that documentary films are only rarely nominated separately for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. The most recent nomination was Hoop Dreams (1994). Woodstock (1970) was the next most recent nomination.
