Juliette Binoche on Her Directorial Debut ‘In-i In Motion,’ Revisiting Her Daunting Experience Making a Bold Dance Show With Akram Khan: ‘I Felt Like I Wasn’t Going to Survive’

Juliette Binoche won an Oscar for the “The English Patient;” has worked with the greatest auteurs, from Leos Carax to Abbas Kiarostami and Olivier Assayas; and has presided over Cannes and Berlin juries, among her many achievements. But in classic Juliette-Binoche style, the iconoclastic French actor didn’t take the easy route to direct her first film.

‘In-i In Motion,’ which is world premiering today at San Sebastian Film Festival, charts her chaotic, daunting and ultimately cathartic experience co-creating and performing a dance show with well-known British choreographer Akram Khan over the course of a sabbatical year and a half in 2007. It turns out that making “In-i In Motion” proved almost as excruciatingly difficult as creating the show itself, Binoche tells Variety ahead of San Sebastian, because it required her to transform 170 hours of footage, chase music rights for songs used during countless rehearsal sessions and edit the abstract material into a film.