FOR someone whose new film, The Divide, offers as bleak a view of humanity as you are likely to see outside a news broadcast, Xavier Gens does a lot of laughing.

The French director laughs when he recalls how his leading lady probably "hated" him by the end of the shoot. He laughs when he compares helming his first big studio film in America to being eaten by a shark. And he laughs when we get to the subject of whether Gerard Depardieu will be in his next movie.

Set in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, science fiction-horror The Divide tells the tale of a group of New Yorkers who flee to the basement of their building to keep themselves safe. It's Lord of the Flies territory, where only the strongest stand a chance of surviving. Or as the poster tag line puts it: "The lucky ones died in the blast."

Gens calls The Divide "a movie about the ghost of 9/11". Everyone had such high hopes of the new millennium, he says, then everything changed and feelings of insecurity became rife. The media has played a large part in that, he believes.

"It's the media who create the insecurity. If you watch the news every day it's very depressing. The world is beautiful, but when you watch the news it's always bad news."

It's a fair bet his movie will do to audiences exactly what it says in the title. At last year's Edinburgh International Film Festival audiences were warned it was "not for the faint of heart".

Gens has planted his flag in controversial territory before, with a previous horror, Frontier(s), being described by the New York Times as having "enough blood to satiate even the most ravenous gore hounds".

Gens says he wanted The Divide to show how one strong individual could exert power over a group. "I've put in it what I feel about human beings. It's not really hopeful but I think there is some hope."

In The Divide it is the weakest who suffer most, and that means the women, chief among them a character played by Rosanna Arquette. Gens admits he was nervous about asking her to go to such extremes. "For me she was the girl from The Big Blue. I was a huge fan of Rosanna from my childhood. I thought, oh my God how can I tell her to do that." Arquette, though, was heavily involved in shaping her character. "She was very generous."

On screen, the film gives off an air of relentless, claustrophobic, terror. It must have been pretty intense on set, I suggest. He laughs. Maybe that was something that could have been managed better, he says. Though the actors were always in control, the drama required them to appear totally out of control. That was unnerving for some of the cast, among them Lauren German.

"As a European it was natural for me to play like that but as an American it's complicated. In America you are very cool, you sit, people bring you food, it's another way of working. In Europe it's tougher."

German, says Gens, was "freaking out" by the end. There goes that laugh again. "I think she hated me, really." So how does he respond to accusations that his film is anti-women? "It's much more against men than against women. It's men who do the worst things. The women are the purest people in the film. For sure there are some extreme moments for women in the film, but that's important for the conflict situation. If you want to create a strong drama you need to have a strong conflict."

The film is not against women, it's against inhumanity, he says. "I have too much respect for my mum." So he's very pro-women? More laughter. "Really. I know it's difficult to believe it when you watch the film."

The Divide is Gens's third film as a director after Frontier(s) and 2007's Hitman. Though it is hardly unheard of for French directors to work in America – see Luc Besson et al – the French film industry traditionally prides itself on keeping home grown talent at home.

Gens, however, finds himself better suited to the States. "I would love to make more movies in France, but as soon as I bring a project people say the script is not possible to produce. They want more comedy and I'm not really a comedy guy.

"I think we can do very strong movies, but if you arrived with the script for There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men they would say no, they would prefer to produce the next comedy."

He likes working with foreign actors too, admiring the way they change from film to film, unlike in France where films tend to be built around a famous persona.

So you don't want Gerard Depardieu in your next movie? "No, because he is overused."

Although he likes working in America, he didn't have the easiest time on Hitman, a movie based on the video game. It was his first big studio project, and the 36-year-old now thinks it came too early. I was a baby, he says, and they "took me like a big shark, they digested me and I did a very bad film with them. That was an experience".

He's just finished a new horror, The ABCs of Death, which features German, French, Italian, British and American actors. But not Gerard Depardieu?

"Not Gerard Depardieu," he laughs.

The Divide is out in cinemas on April 20.