French actor Juliette Binoche has built an international career over four decades working with some of world cinema’s most prominent directors, but the Oscar-winning performer says her first experience directing a feature documentary required her to abandon certainty, reputation and control.

Her directorial debut, In-I In Motion, premiered in New York at the Museum of Modern Art and revisits the physically and emotionally demanding dance collaboration she created with British choreographer Akram Khan in the late 2000s. Constructed from rehearsal footage filmed over several months, the documentary chronicles Binoche’s immersion into contemporary dance and the personal experiences that informed the project’s exploration of intimacy, fear and emotional dependence.

Ahead of the screening, Binoche acknowledged uncertainty over how audiences would respond to the film’s fragmented and non-linear structure.“This film isn’t going to hold your hand,” she said while discussing how to introduce the documentary to viewers.The project marks a significant departure from the screen performances that established Binoche as one of Europe’s most acclaimed actors.

After early recognition in Hail Mary, she achieved international prominence through films including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient and Chocolat. Her later collaborations with directors such as Michael Haneke and Abbas Kiarostami reinforced her standing within international arthouse cinema.In In-I In Motion, however, Binoche appears outside the polished framework typically associated with established screen actors.

The documentary follows six months of rehearsals involving improvisation, physical exhaustion and repeated movement exercises designed to strip away performance habits and emotional restraint.“I wanted the audience to experience what it feels like to be in a process of creation,” Binoche said. “That’s not a red carpet. It’s searching.”She described the experience of working in an unfamiliar discipline as central to the project’s meaning.“Being a beginner meant to not know,” she said.

“It’s about orienting into a truth within you. It’s not about being confident, it’s about allowing yourself to be nothing.”The original stage production, In-I, premiered in London in 2007 and later toured internationally for more than 100 performances. The piece combined dance, theatre and spoken dialogue to depict the emotional trajectory of a relationship, moving from attraction and tenderness to conflict and separation.

Binoche and Khan developed the work through extended conversations with acting coach Susan Batson and improvisational exercises led by movement director Su-Man Hsu. The resulting performances incorporated themes of attachment, dependence and emotional violence.At the centre of the documentary is a sequence inspired by a violent assault Binoche experienced as a teenager.

During one climactic scene, staged against a blood-red installation created by artist Anish Kapoor, Binoche reenacts strangulation while suspended above the stage.The sequence drew from memories of a mugging she experienced as a young girl in Paris.“It became a big fight, and I was strangled,” Binoche said. “I said to him: ‘Go ahead, do it.’ And then he stopped because I said that.”Binoche rejected the suggestion that revisiting the attack was uniquely traumatic, instead linking her experience to broader patterns of violence affecting women.

“A lot of people go through it,” she said. “In France, the percentage of women who go through violence like this is huge.”The documentary was assembled from nearly 200 hours of rehearsal footage recorded by filmmaker Marion Stalens, Binoche’s sister. Binoche said the idea of turning the material into a film had existed for years, encouraged in part by late actor and director Robert Redford after he attended a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008.

“He repeated it several times,” Binoche said of Redford’s encouragement to adapt the performance for film.The project eventually moved forward after producers approached her several years ago asking whether she had a film she wanted to direct.Despite years spent working alongside major filmmakers, Binoche said she never previously felt urgency to direct because she already considered herself deeply involved in the creative process as an actor.

“As an actor, you’re so involved in the directing because you’re in the middle of it,” she said.Rather than imitating techniques from directors she worked with, Binoche said she absorbed a broader commitment to instinct and intuition. Over her career she has collaborated with filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax, whose 1986 film Mauvais Sang became one of her breakthrough performances.

“What I learned from most directors is that they follow their intuition,” she said.Binoche said the pursuit of artistic growth requires abandoning attachment to public image or professional status.“If you’re attached to status, I think you’re losing possible opportunities for art,” she said.The actor’s directorial debut arrives during a period of heightened visibility beyond acting roles. In 2025, Binoche served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, where Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi received the Palme d’Or for It Was Just An Accident.

During the festival, Binoche faced criticism after declining to answer questions about a public letter concerning Gaza and the film industry. Later that evening, she delivered a tribute during the opening ceremony to Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, whose life was the subject of a documentary screening at the festival.“They didn’t know what I was going to do in the evening,” Binoche said, reflecting on the controversy.

“I had a plan.”Binoche said the projects she continues to pursue are driven primarily by stories involving personal change and emotional transformation.“What I like in choosing a story, a script or a play is when there’s transformation,” she said. “Because I think we can transform.”

The contemporary art exhibition, one of the world’s most influential cultural events, has been overshadowed by geopolitical tensions linked to ongoing conflicts and international human rights disputes, triggering demonstrations outside national pavilions and deep divisions within the global art community.

Organizers said visitors attending the exhibition at Venice’s Giardini and Arsenale venues would instead vote for their preferred national pavilion and featured participant in the central exhibition, titled “In Minor Keys,” replacing the traditional jury-selected awards system.

The jury said its resignation was tied specifically to the participation of countries currently facing investigations by the International Criminal Court over alleged human rights abuses. Critics of the move argued that the decision was selective and politically inconsistent, with some artists and activists saying the United States should also have been scrutinized under similar standards.

British-Indian sculptor and artist Anish Kapoor criticized what he described as “the politics of hate and war,” reflecting broader tensions that have increasingly influenced major international cultural institutions.The Biennale’s main exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” had already been shaped by tragedy before its opening following the death in 2025 of curator Koyo Kouoh, whose vision for the event centered on themes of memory, identity and political fracture.

This year’s exhibition features participation from around 100 national pavilions, including several countries using the platform to address war, migration, colonialism and displacement through large-scale installations and multimedia works.

The controversy surrounding Israel’s and Russia’s inclusion reflects wider cultural disputes that have intensified across Europe and North America since the outbreak of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, where artists, museums and festivals have increasingly faced pressure over institutional partnerships, state representation and political neutrality.

Organizers said the audience-voted awards would be announced on the exhibition’s closing day on Nov. 22.