Known for Directing
JR is a French photographer and artist. Describing himself as a photograffeur, he flyposts large black-and-white photographic images in public locations, in a manner similar to the appropriation of the built environment by the graffiti artist.
Born
February 22, 1983 (age 43)
Birthplace
Paris, France
Filmography
28 films, 2 shows


An Urban Allegory
2024 · 21m
country: France
A ballet dancer is late for an audition for a show inspired by Plato's Allegory of the Cave. She arrives with her seven-year-old son, Jay, and begs the director to give her a chance.


Tehachapi
2024 · 1h 32m
country: France
French visual artist-director JR situates his latest social-art intervention in a Southern Californian supermax prison, where he has imagined an enormously ambitious collaboration with the facility’s inmates.
The Past Goes Fast
The Past Goes Fast
2022 · 11m
country: Unknown
In The Past Goes Fast, Robert De Niro opens the doors of his father’s studio, preserved for almost thirty years, to JR. He discusses his complex relationship with his father, Robert De Niro Sr (1922-1993), an abstract expressionist painter.


Paper & Glue
2021 · 1h 34m
country: United States
A documentary following JR's artwork giving a global voice to everyday people.


Tehachapi
2021 · 14m
country: Unknown
Currently and formerly incarcerated men at California’s supermax penitentiary in Tehachapi collaborate with renowned photographer and artist JR on a project to transform the prison yard into a powerful – but temporary – work of art.


Omelia Contadina
2020 · 10m
country: France
A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture.


The Clichy-Montfermeil Chronicles
2017 · 1h 10m
country: Unknown
JR, a contemporary artist, returns to Clichy-Montfermeil in the suburbs of Paris where his artistic adventure first began 14 years ago with Ladj Ly, his strongest link to the neighborhood. Both decide to create a monumental mural portraying a singular portrait of the inhabitants of this territory, inspired by the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. "The Clichy-Montfermeil Chronicles" not only illustrates how an urban utopia of the 1960’s has transformed into a neighborhood in a state of unrest, but also sheds a light on subjects JR and Ladj Ly covered over a decade ago.


Faces Places
2017 · 1h 34m
country: France
Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.


Ellis
2015 · 15m
country: United States
Ellis, a fourteen-minute film directed by JR and written by Academy Award winner Eric Roth, tells the elusive story of countless immigrants whose pursuit of a new life led them to the now-shuttered Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital. Following its opening in 1902, approximately 1.2 million people passed through the facility, where the Statue of Liberty can be seen from the windows. Languishing in a sort of purgatory awaiting their fate, many were never discharged.


Les Bosquets
2015 · 18m
country: France
Art and social uproar interweave in this film based on the ballet Les Bosquets of New York City Ballet, inspired by the 2005 French suburb riots. A continuation of JR's Portrait of a Generation, it recalls his experience in the ghetto of Montfermeil using various means of expression and narration: video archives, choreography, and testimony.


Women Are Heroes
2011 · 1h 20m
country: France
In his film "Women Are Heroes", photographer JR takes his audience into some exceptional women’s lives. Because there are, most of the time, the first victims in war-time and left to their own during peace-time, JR pays tribute to those women who, in spite of the hurdles, keep smiling, keep fighting and keep hoping a better life. From Rio’s shantytowns to Kenyan slums, passing by Indian and Cambodian streets, he offers a fresh look at their struggles and expectations. Displaying their portraits via huge montages on their neighborhood’s walls, JR sublimates those extraordinary destinies and sheds the lights on those strong and moving personalities, too rarely recognized enough.