Delbonnel was born in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France and graduated in 1978 from the ESEC (Paris, ?le-de-France).　　He has collaborated twice with fellow French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet for Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain and A Very Long Engagement. He was the director of photography for the 2007 film Across the Universe and the 2009 fantasy-adventure film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. He worked on Tim Burton's 2012 film Dark Shadows, and with The Coen Brothers on their 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis.　　He has been nominated four times for an Academy Award, for Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, A Very Long Engagement, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Inside Llewyn Davis.　　His work tends to feature very stylized color palettes, often very warm and featuring yellows and greens as prominent and ubiquitous colors which often tint the whole image. Also often in his work, the film stock used has a very apparent, well-defined grain structure.