In 2011, with the help of her now ex-partner Jérémie Elkaïm, Valérie Donzelli directed her second full-length feature film, Declaration of War. This movie, presented during the 2011 Cannes Festival, achieved great success, both with the public and critics, in France. It is directly inspired by their private life, relating how their couple fought against their son's cancer when he was 18 months. As Tim Palmer notes, "Declaration of War serves as an emblematic, even quintessential, contemporary French production: a barometer to gauge film industry standards and prevailing French cultural taste, a standard-bearer of ostensibly progressive materials, an ambassador text for French screen values." The movie was selected for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, but was not part of the final list.
