Audry was born in
Orange, Vaucluse,
France. She was born into an upper class family. Her great uncle
Gaston Doumergue served as both President of the Republic and Prime Minister of France. Audry worked as an assistant to directors
Jean Delannoy,
G. W. Pabst and
Max Ophüls and directed a short film of her own,
Le Feu de paille (1943), with the help of the Centre Artistique et Technique des Jeunes du Cinéma (now
La Femis). The end of
World War II and the
liberation of France provided increased opportunities for women, but they still faced prejudice in the film industry. At the time, the film was very controversial and was censored in the
United States and the
United Kingdom. The film has been called a "landmark of lesbian representation". She frequently collaborated with her sister, the novelist and screenwriter
Colette Audry. Audry's film style was traditional and at odds with the
French New Wave. Audry retired from feature films after
Bitter Fruit (1967), but she co-directed with Wojciech Solarz a Polish-French miniseries of the life of
Honoré de Balzac in 1973. Audry died in a road accident in
Poissy,
Yvelines, France in 1977. She was married to the
screenwriter Pierre Laroche with whom she collaborated on film scripts on a number of occasions. ==Filmography==