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Why French film icon Juliette Binoche isn’t worried about AI replacing human talent

Humanity and intuition are the secrets to great art, according to Juliette Binoche, who talks about her directorial debut In-I In Motion

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French actress Juliette Binoche at the Regent Hong Kong in April 2026. Binoche is in town to show her directorial debut, In-I In Motion, at the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Ashlyn Chak

After more than four decades of working with world-renowned European auteurs, from Krzysztof Kieślowski and Michael Haneke to Olivier Assayas and Claire Denis, French actress Juliette Binoche has simple advice for creating great art that moves people: be very human and trust one’s intuition.

“The purpose of films is to transform the audience so they become richer at the end of watching a film. It is nourishing their soul and putting questions in their lives,” she says in an interview at the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival. “From my experience, when you start with the body, you’re usually not wrong, acting-wise. It’s always truthful.

“If you’re too much in your head and don’t relate it to your body, acting becomes nothing; it becomes something intellectual that you don’t actually receive as an audience.”

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Binoche is now an advocate for the physical experience, but it has not always been that way. She shares that she began her career as a “line-obsessed” actress who deeply feared forgetting her lines, but later sometimes tried going into scenes without preparation to “jump into a place that made me very uncomfortable”.

“To actually decide not to learn the lines was really dangerous for me, and it was interesting,” she says. “You feel what you need or don’t need. It’s not rational. It’s like painting, in a way; you just go with what you connect with.”

Binoche at the Hong Kong International Film Festival on April 11, 2026. Photo: Humphrey Ng/HKCTA
Binoche at the Hong Kong International Film Festival on April 11, 2026. Photo: Humphrey Ng/HKCTA
In 2007, without any formal dance training, she partnered with British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan – who, in 2024, received an honorary fellowship from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts – for a modern dance piece titled In-I.
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