Juliette Binoche brought her star power and French flair to a packed talk on Thursday, reflecting on her career, her craft and her next moves at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival‘s 60th edition.
The occasion carries some weight: on Saturday, the French star — winner of an Oscar, a César and four European Film Awards — will receive KVIFF‘s Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contributions to world cinema, the festival’s highest honor. To mark the occasion, the fest is also screening Certified Copy (2010), Three Colors: Blue (1993) and In-I in Motion (2025), the documentary she directed and stars in.
Her Thursday talk, moderated by Variety‘s Marta Balaga, addressed that doc, which chronicles her 2007 artistic collaboration with British dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, blending dance and theater to explore the emotional highs and lows of a romantic relationship.
The audience wondered if, just like dance, she would like to try anything else that’s new for her. “Trying [to direct] fiction would be something for me, so I’m working on it, but it’s going to take some time,” Binoche replied, without sharing further details.
Asked if she could possibly direct a theater production, Binoche again mentioned a potential return to film directing: “I think I want to try one film as a fiction, and then from there, we’ll see.”
On what’s next, Binoche pointed to a new collaboration with Turkish writer-director Berkun Oya on Merci, Charlotte (Thank You, Charlotte). “It’s his third film,” she said. “We’re going to start shooting at the end of August.” The film casts Binoche as a French woman who adopts a Turkish child — a story, she suggested, built around the collision of two very different worlds.
The French star also recalled her famously brief Oscar acceptance speech in 1997, when she won the best supporting actress award for her work in The English Patient. “I [was] so surprised. I didn’t prepare anything,” she recalled. “I thought Lauren was going to get it.” Indeed, Lauren Bacall was nominated that year in the same category for The Mirror Has Two Faces. Asked about that Oscar experience on Thursday, Binoche reiterated: “I thought she was going to win. Everybody did, actually.”
Did she experience the Oscar win as a life-changing event? “No, it’s simpler than that,” she said. “You try to survive the demands of being in front of everyone. When you come back on the sides of the stage, it’s all black, you’ve been in the light, [then] it’s all black, and all of a sudden you have all the flashes coming … and [photographers] taking pictures. It’s like you’re not a human being. It’s like discovering a space that is quite overwhelming.”
She saved her most expansive answer for the simplest question — what acting means to her. “At the end of the day, it’s really about giving yourself and sharing what we go through as human beings,” Binoche offered. “It allows you to expose yourself … with others. … It’s not always easy, but it’s a passion. It’s a responsibility as well as an exploration of humankind, and of yourself. It’s a way of knowing yourself, or being astonished sometimes by what we do and feel.”
The double anniversary edition of KVIFF has brought a parade of stars to the picturesque spa town, including Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, A Real Pain), Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Bride!, The Lost Daughter), Harvey Keitel (Mean Streets, Reservoir Dogs), legendary cinematographer Robert Richardson and Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Rain Man).
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