Juliette Binoche to receive the Malaga French film festival's first honorary award

She has won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a César, a Palme at Cannes, a Silver Bear at Berlin, a Volpi Cup at Venice, a Donostia at San Sebastian, four European Film Awards and even an International Goya besides the many nominations for these and other awards. Her shelves at home must be stacked full with so many statuettes and other accolades, but that did not stop her from saying "Yes" to the small, but ambitious, event that is the Málaga Festival de Cine Francés (French film festival) when it came knocking on her door with a new honorary award for her. The annual film event, organised by the Alliance Française, has seen the likes of Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Candela Peña, Rossy de Palma and Julie Gayet (actress, director, producer and partner of former French president François Hollande), but never a star like Juliette Binoche (born Paris 1964). She will attend the inauguration of the event on 11 October to collect her honorary award - the first time such an award has been presented - and to celebrate this long-running event, now in its 30th year.

Event sources confessed to SUR that, despite the fact that it was a very carefully studied and worked-out proposal, the presence of the star of The English Patient has been a "wonderful surprise" that has revolutionised the French Film Festival itself, which runs until 18 October in Malaga city. The festival will include a retrospective of the actress' career to date, one of the most international names in France and who also has a particular relationship with Spain. She especially has a close relationship with film director Isabel Coixet, with whom she worked on Nobody Wants the Night (2015), for which she was nominated for a Goya.

A key figure in European cinema with one foot in Hollywood, her career blazed a trail from the very beginning when she worked under the direction of Jean-Luc Godard in Hail Mary (1985), followed by André Techiné in Rendez-vous (1985) and Alice and Martin (1998), Leos Carax (with whom she filmed Bad Blood (1986) - they were a couple for a while), Louis Malle for Damage (1992) with Jeremy Irons, Jean-Paul Rappeneau (The Horseman on the Roof (1995)), Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours (2008) and Double Lives (2018), Bruno Dumont (Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)), Patrice Leconte (The Widow of Saint-Pierre (2000), Emmanuel Carrère (Between Two Worlds (2021)) and Claire Denis (Both Sides of the Blade (2022)). And these are just a few from her filmography.

The big break onto the international scene for this Parisian actress, daughter of interpreters Jean-Marie Binoche and Monique Stalens, came with the big-production film The English Patient (1996) directed by Anthony Minghella, which won her an Oscar. In her career there is no shortage of blockbusters, such as Godzilla (2014) or Ghost in the Shell (2017), along with more personal projects both in Europe and the United States, with filmmakers such as Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being -1988). Some more examples include Kieslowski (Three Colours: Blue - 1993), a film she accepted in preference to the offer of starring in Jurassic Park), Michael Haneke (Caché - 2005), Naomi Kawase (Vision (2018)), Hou Hsiao Hsien (Flight of the Red Balloon - 2007), Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat 2000), Abbas Kiarostami (Certified Copy - 2010) and Koreeda (The Truth -2019).

So many titles to choose from for the retrospective that the Malaga French Film Festival will dedicate to Binoche. The organisers are also currently finalising the official section of French-language premieres that will complete the line-up for this, the 30th edition of a festival that promises to leave its mark, thanks in part to Juliette.