For Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, head of last year’s jury at the Cannes Film Festival, it’s not hard to understand why films that succeed on the Croisette win praise in Hollywood.
And it’s not because of reforms to make the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences more diverse.
“The strength of these films leads to their success,” Binoche told AFP in an interview in Los Angeles.
It certainly seems like the Cannes jury made some prescient choices: films premiered at the festival earned a total of 19 Oscar nominations.
Norwegian family drama “Sentimental Value,” which won the second Grand Prix, and Brazilian thriller “The Secret Agent” are both in the running for best picture.
Cannes’ top Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” and the rave-themed road trip film “Sirat,” which won the special jury prize, will compete with those two titles for the best international film honor.
Binoche said, “That’s because these films are so beautiful, so unique, and so strong that sometimes they defy normalcy.”
“It’s not difficult to recognize films with their own strengths,” said the 61-year-old actress, who has won awards at the Venice, Berlin and Cannes festivals in addition to an Academy Award for “The English Patient.”
– ‘reconciliation’ –
The Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival have not always honored the same types of films, with the prestigious program in France often leaning towards the work of auteur directors, some of which are highly political.
But about a decade ago, when more international voters were invited to join the Academy in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite scandal, the award winners from both ceremonies were often united, and Cannes has taken on its role as the Oscars bellwether.
In the past five years, two films have won both the Palme d’Or and the best picture Oscar: the South Korean genre satire “Parasite” and last year’s darling of American indie cinema, Shawn Baker’s “Anora.”
This has happened only four times in 80 years, and it can’t happen this year, Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” is not in the Best Picture competition.
So is Panahi’s work, which highlights the dilemmas a group of ordinary Iranians face when they confront a man they believe tortured them in prison, not given its due?
For Binoche, “There is no such thing as a fair price, because a film is just her.”
He explained, “One can criticize the film by saying that it is not entirely well acted, but it is just not the actors we are used to seeing on screen because non-professionals have been used.”
But he also said that Panahi, “who wrote this screenplay in an Iranian prison, who was on hunger strike,” has highlighted “room for reconciliation with his executioner…”.
– ‘Changes lives’ –
The French film legend says that for him the most important thing about a film “is that it changes lives, changes people’s conscience.”
Binoche is currently promoting her first directorial effort, which tells the story of an experience that had a deep impact on her.
“In-Eye in Motion” takes a candid look at his preparations for the dance performance he created with British choreographer Akram Khan, which premiered in London in 2008.
The actress says that those 120 shows taught her to face her fears.
“Every time, I thought I was going to die,” she recalled.
The film features rehearsal footage, which she edited, and invites the audience to take a bird’s-eye view of the unusual creative collaboration between actress and dancer.
Binoche says that making the documentary taught her that directing is not very different from acting.
In both cases, “you have to be in tune with your intuition…trust what you feel,” she said.
After starring in dozens of films, Binoche is eager to get behind the camera again.
But when asked what her next topic might be, she smiled and said, “I can’t say anything else about it.”
RFO/SST/KSB
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.