Barbet Schroeder entered the film world as a journalist for Cahiers du cinéma in 1958, before joining Jean-Luc Godard in 1963 as an assistant trainee on “Les Carabiniers”. A year later, he founded his own production company, Les Films du Losange, and worked with Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and Wim Wenders. His career took off in the USA in 1987 with “Barfly”, and three years later the director was nominated for an Oscar for his darkly humorous chronicle of the von Bülow mystery.

This was followed by thrillers including “JF would share an apartment” in 1992 and “Kiss of Death” in 1995, starring Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson. Schroeder's eclectic career took him to Colombia, where he directed The Virgin of Killers (2000), which won an award at the Venice Film Festival. He made his mark at Cannes with L'Avocat de la terreur (The Terrorist's Advocate) in 2007, selected in the Un Certain Regard category, the 2nd story in his trilogy on evil, initiated in 1974 with General Idi Amin Dada: Self-Portrait and brought to a close in 2017 with The Venerable W.

Although Barbet Schroeder's early films were based on the realist movement, the filmmaker likes to try his hand at everything, and his filmography includes fiction and thrillers aimed at a wide audience. In 2023, Barbet Schroeder filmed his friend, the painter Ricardo Cavallo, in a documentary entitled Ricardo et la peinture.

Barbet Schroeder was present at the Rencontres 7e Art Lausanne for a conversation the Capitole with Frédéric Maire, during which he received the Prix des Rencontres.