Claude Barras studied illustration for children at the Emile Cohl school, anthropology and digital images at the Lumière University in Lyon and 3D computer graphics at the cantonal art school in Lausanne. After completing his studies, he co-directed Banquise with Cédric Louis, his first animated short, which was selected for the Official Competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Claude then went on to direct a dozen animated shorts for the Hélium Films animation collective (Le génie de la boîte de raviolis, Animatou, Sainte-Barbe, Land of the Heads and Chambre 69, among others), which were selected and won awards at numerous festivals.

In 2013 he began work on his first stop-motion feature, co-written with Céline Sciamma. Ma vie de courgette was unveiled at Cannes in 2016, in the Fortnight. Distributed in over 60 countries, the film attracted over 175,000 viewers in Switzerland and 800,000 in France, and won numerous awards. These included two Césars and an Oscar nomination. In 2018, with Nancy Huston and Morgan Navarro, Claude developed the idea for a new stop motion feature film, which he co-wrote with Catherine Paillé. Sauvages, which takes place in the forest of Borneo in the Malay Archipelago and aims to raise public awareness of ecological issues, was presented in the Special Screening of the Official Selection at the Cannes 2024 Festival.