‘I told him, “Go ahead, do it”’: Juliette Binoche on how a strangling attack as a teen inspired her directorial debut

The French actor steps into unfamiliar – and bracingly raw – territory with In-I In Motion after four decades reigning the international arthouse. You have to go out of your comfort zone, she says, ‘otherwise you become a prude’

Starring in more than 70 movies is all well and good, but Juliette Binoche can still get the jitters. Right now, the Oscar-winning actor is biting her lip on the third floor of a Manhattan high-rise. In 20 minutes, she will step into a sold-out movie theater to introduce her directorial debut at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Titled In-I In Motion, the vérité-style documentary follows Binoche’s late-2000s plunge into the world of contemporary dance for a series of daring and bewitchingly strange performances with the British dancer Akram Khan. “So,” she asks me, “how do you think I should present it?”

Which is how I find myself giving advice about public speaking to arguably the most celebrated French actor working today. She did a great job last night introducing the film at the buzzy Metrograph cinema downtown, I say. But it’s tough to know how to prepare an audience for the film’s poetic (and sometimes confusing), nonlinear narrative: maybe you just have to let them have at it. She smiles slyly. “Should I say: ‘This film isn’t going to hold your hand’?”