Her father, a civil servant, moved the family from Cameroon to French Somaliland and then to Senegal, and those experiences have long colored her work, most conspicuously in Chocolat (1988) and What Material (2009). Denis first studied economics, but then drifted towards a course at the famed French film school IDHEC. Following graduation, she set forth into the world and found work as an assistant director to her colleagues on Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986) and Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987).