Juliette Binoche, one of Europe’s most international actresses, will visit the San Sebastian Festival’s 70th edition, to run from 16-24 September, for the fourth time to receive one of this year’s Donostia Awards in recognition of an extensive career which has seen her play almost 75 characters, from power-wielding heroines to fragile beings with historical figures, drama roles and comedy parts along the way.

The award ceremony will take place at the Kursaal Auditorium and will be accompanied by the Donostia Award Screening of Avec amour et acharnement / Both Sides of the Blade (2022), the movie for which Claire Denis landed the Silver Bear for Best Director at the last Berlin Festival with a cast featuring Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin and Binoche herself.  

Having taken her first steps in the theatre and trained as an artist at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art, Juliette Binoche (Paris, 1964) made her movie debut with Liberty Belle (Pascal Kané, 1983), followed by numerous roles in the works of filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard (Je vous salue, Marie / Hail Mary, 1985), Jacques Doillon (La vie de famille / Family Life, Official Selection, 1985) and André Techiné (Rendez-vous 1985), with whom she once again coincided years later on Alice et Martin (1998). The iconic Mauvais sang / The Night Is Young (1986) was her first collaboration with Leos Carax, under whom she also worked in Les amants du Pont-Neuf / The Lovers on the Bridge (1991).

From the very beginning of her career she has alternated titles made in French with many others in English, including the literary adaptations of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988), Wuthering Heights (Peter Kosminsky, 1992) and Damage (Louis Malle, 1992), in which she starred alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, Ralph Fiennes and Jeremy Irons, respectively. She has featured in casts with Mathieu Amalric, Daniel Auteuil, Judi Dench, Steve Carell, Catherine Deneuve, Johnny Depp, Ethan Hawke, Mathieu Kassovitz, Samuel L. Jackson, Denis Lavant, Olivier Martinez, Clive Owen and Robert Pattinson, among others.

Binoche played a grieving woman in the film opening Krzysztof Kieslowski’s famous trilogy, Trois couleurs: Bleu (Three Colours: Blue, Zabaltegi, 1994), receiving her first César Award, an accolade for which she has racked up another nine nominations, and the acting award at the Venice Festival. She was also the novelist George Sand in Les enfants du siècle (The Children of the Century, Diane Kurys, 1999). However, widespread international recognition was to arrive with her unforgettable role as the nurse in The English Patient (1996), bagging her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and the acting award at the Berlin Festival.

She has worked under the orders of European filmmakers including Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who closed San Sebastian Festival’s Official Selection competition with Le hussard sur le toit (The Horseman on the Roof, 1995); Chantal Akerman (Un divan à New York / A Couch in New York, 1996), Patrice Leconte (La veuve de Saint-Pierre / The Widow of Saint-Pierre, 2000), Lasse Hallström (Chocolat, 2000), John Boorman (Country of My Skull,2004) and Michael Haneke, with whom she has filmed two essential movies: Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages (Code Unknown, 2000) and Caché (Hidden, 2005). In 2002 she also played the lead part in Décalage horaire (Jet Lag, Danièle Thompson), the film bringing her to San Sebastian for the first time to close the Official Selection out of competition.