The European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award stands as a formal recognition of Claude Chabrol's career as a French director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Chabrol was a part of the French New Wave movement, a cinematic current within which his work as a filmmaker took shape.

Born on 24 June 1930 in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, Chabrol was a French citizen who pursued an unusually broad course of education. He attended Lycée Louis-le-Grand and went on to study at the Paris Medical Faculty, the Paris Faculty of Law and Economics, and the Faculty of Arts of Paris. His professional roles extended across directing, producing, screenwriting, acting, and film criticism, and his work made use of French, English, and German.

Over the course of his career, Chabrol received several awards. He was given the Louis Delluc Prize and the Golden Bear, as well as the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. These distinctions mark different points across a working life spent in French cinema and connected, through the French New Wave movement, to a broader international filmmaking context.

Chabrol died on 12 September 2010 in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. He had been born and died in the same city, Paris, where his education at institutions including Lycée Louis-le-Grand had begun. The European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award remains among the recognitions formally associated with his name.