For Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, the top of final yr’s jury on the Cannes movie pageant, it is not arduous to know why the films that succeeded on the Croisette go on to win accolades in Hollywood.
And it is not due to reforms made to make the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences extra numerous.
“The strength of these films leads to their success,” Binoche informed AFP in an interview in Los Angeles.
It definitely looks like the Cannes jury made some prophetic decisions: the crop of movies that premiered on the pageant earned a complete of 19 Oscar nominations.
Norwegian household drama “Sentimental Value” — which received the second prize, Grand Prix — and Brazilian thriller “The Secret Agent” are each within the operating for greatest image.
Cannes’ prime Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just An Accident” and rave-themed street journey film “Sirat,” which took a particular jury prize, will compete with these two titles for greatest worldwide movie honors.
“It’s because these films are so beautiful, so unique and so strong that they sometimes go against the grain,” mentioned Binoche.
“It’s not hard to recognize films with their own strength,” mentioned the 61-year-old actress who, moreover her Academy Award for “The English Patient,” has received prizes on the Venice, Berlin and Cannes festivals.
The Academy Awards and the Cannes movie pageant haven’t all the time honored the identical movies, with the celebrated occasion in France typically leaning in the direction of works by auteur administrators, a few of them extraordinarily political.
But a couple of decade in the past, when extra worldwide voters had been invited to hitch the Academy within the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite scandal, the prizewinners from the 2 galas have typically converged, and Cannes has embraced its position as an Oscars bellwether.
Over the final 5 years, two movies have received each the Palme d’Or and the very best image Oscar: South Korean class satire “Parasite” and final yr’s “Anora” from Sean Baker, a darling of US indie cinema.
That has solely occurred 4 instances in 80 years, and can’t occur this yr, with Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just An Accident” not in greatest image rivalry.
So was Panahi’s work — which spotlights the dilemmas of a gaggle of strange Iranians as they confront a person they consider to have tortured them in jail — not given its due?
For Binoche, “there is no such thing as fair value, because a film just belongs to itself.”
“One could criticize the film by saying that it’s not totally well acted, but it’s just not actors we are used to seeing on screen because he used non-professionals,” she defined.
But she added that Panahi, “who wrote this script in prison in Iran, who went on hunger strike,” has highlighted “space… for reconciliation with his executioner.”
The French movie legend says that crucial factor for her a couple of movie “is that it changes lives, changes people’s consciences.”
Binoche is at the moment selling her first directorial effort, which tells the story of an expertise that profoundly affected her.
“In-I in Motion” gives a candid have a look at her preparations for the dance efficiency she created with British choreographer Akram Khan, which premiered in London in 2008.
The actress says these 120 reveals taught her to face her fears.
“Each time, I thought I was going to die,” she recalled.
The movie options footage of rehearsals, which she edited, and invitations the viewer to get a chook’s eye view of the bizarre artistic collaboration between the actress and the dancer.
Binoche says making the documentary has taught her that directing is just not so completely different from appearing.
In each instances, “you have to be in sync with your own intuition… you have to believe in what you feel,” she mentioned.
After performing in dozens of movies, Binoche is raring to get behind the digital camera once more.
But when requested what her subsequent topic may be, she mentioned with a smile, “I can’t say any more about it.”
© 2026 AFP