Film critic Danny Leigh identified this in her early work: “Almost uniquely, Fiennes remains adamant she wants [Michael] Clark – or whoever she happens to be dealing with – to be understood through their work rather than the other way round; not for her the hackneyed game of small-screen head shrinking.”[1] Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw says her 2010 film Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, “could be described as a ‘participatory documentary’ in the sense that the film-maker gets alongside her subject and in some way contributes to the art being created.”[2] Fiennes’ work has screened internationally in festivals including Cannes, Toronto, Rotterdam, IDFA and Sundance, distributed theatrically and broadcast.

[6] Her foster brother, Michael Emery, is an archaeologist and her nephew, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, played Tom Riddle, young Lord Voldemort, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Although best known for his architectural studies, “photographer of extraordinary versatility, whose work - featured in 2003 in a major retrospective at the Menier Gallery in London - reflected his sensitivity to places and people, his perennial sense of humour and, not least, an ingrained dislike of pomposity and hierarchy that gave many of his pictures a cutting edge of social comment.”[8] Jini Fiennes, described by the writer Dodie Smith as “almost too interesting to be true”,[8] home-schooled the children, inspired by the Scottish educationalist A.S. Neill.

Bryan Appleyard, writing in The Sunday Times says, “She believes in the autonomous power of the image, its ability to change meanings as you watch.”[10] Fiennes herself describes this approach as an invitation.

She is a director, “who isn’t afraid to risk alienating audiences with her nonlinear storytelling”[13] and works in close collaboration with her subject matter, “her camera responds creatively to what it sees, it modifies and transforms the spectacle.”[2] In a 2020 interview she describes documentary as a practice that can take many forms and which has preceded the moving image; life captured in songs and oral traditions, painting and the written word.

The Late Michael Clark (1999) combines intimate observational documentary with dance sequences carefully restaged for the camera and shot on 16 mm film.

“Somewhere between the relative relaxation of Clarke in front of the camera, "writes the art critic Danny Leigh, “and the film’s Digital-Video derived sense of verité, the results are absorbing, inventive and, more unexpectedly, entirely approachable.”[1] In 2001, London based arts organization Artangel commissioned Fiennes to document Because I Sing, a choral project involving 19 amateur choirs staged by composer Orlando Gough and Belgian theatre maker Alain Platel.

Writing in The Guardian, Andrew Pluver says: “Fiennes has assembled a collage of footage that pays eloquent testimony to the infectious religiosity that appears to be such a powerful force in an otherwise desperate community.”[15] Fiennes’ celebrated collaboration with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek began with ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006), described by The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw as “a highly entertaining and often brilliant tour of modern cinema, with clips from Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky and Chaplin”.

[16] Writing about their collaboration, Žižek says, “When Sophie Fiennes approached me with the idea to do a "pervert's guide" to cinema, our shared goal was to demonstrate how psychoanalytic cinema-criticism is still the best we have, how it can generate insights which compel us to change our entire perspective.”[17] The result is not only an intellectual deep-dive but also, says Bradshaw, “tremendously exhilarating.”[16] VSPRS Show and Tell (2007) is a document of and about Les Ballet C de la B's performance VSPRS, directed by Alain Platel.

This challenging stage work was inspired by the devotional music of Claudio Monteverdi’s Maria Vespers, alongside footage filmed in 1904 of mentally ill in-patients in hospital.

Shot in cinemascope, the film constructs visual set pieces alongside observational footage to capture both the dramatic resonance of Kiefer's art and the intimate process of creation.

The film has moments of surprising drama – such as when the artist pours molten lead down a mound of earth, or smashes endless sheets of glass on a stone floor.

It’s got the uncanny, the sublime, and in many stops a combination of both.”[25] In 2018 Fiennes collaborated with Stopgap Dance Company and choreographer Lucy Bennett to reimagine the live performance ‘Artificial Things’, staging it in a derelict shopping mall.

The original on-stage performance was described as “a magnificent theatrical experience”[26] and “a poignant one-man show about a world under threat.”[27] In Sophie Fiennes’ film “the lens and the screen bring a new, even more intimate, perspective”.