She is known for making films that surround the topic of family and relationships, such as Ça n'arrive qu'aux autres and L'été prochain.

[1] Following their split, Nadine Trintignant started a relationship with French director Alain Corneau, who later adopted her children Marie and Vincent.

[1] Thereafter she held various small positions, mainly in editing, before turning to directing, with her first credited job as assistant editor of the 1955 film Du rififi chez les hommes.

[2] Following the death of her nine-month-old daughter Pauline in 1970, Trintignant wrote and directed Ça n’arrive qu’aux autres, a semi-autobiographical film related to her personal tragedy.

[10] In the 1980s she wrote and directed many films focusing on relationships through a feminist lens, such as Premier Voyage (1980), L'été prochain (1985), and La maison de Jade (1988), despite the fact that according to critics such as Nina Darnton of The New York Times, the "fire of the women's liberation movement [was] no longer fanned to so bright a flame" by then.

The project consisted of 30 short films, each directed by a different filmmaker paired with a public personality and dedicated to make a plea for human rights, focusing on a specific political prisoner.

[14] She has since written several books about her personal life: her autobiography J'ai été jeune un jour (2006);[14][15] a collection of short stories depicting her pain after Marie's death, Un étrange peine (2007);[16] a memoir of her late partner Alain Corneau, Vers d'autres matins (2012);[4][17] and an homage to her mother, La voilette de ma mère (2014).