At the 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, French actress Juliette Binoche took part in a packed on-stage talk reflecting on her career and future plans. The occasion marks her receipt on Saturday of the festival's highest honour, the Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema. Most notably, Binoche revealed that she hopes to direct a fiction feature — a new step beyond her documentary work — though she cautioned that the project would "take some time".

Binoche, who has won an Oscar, a César and four European Film Awards, is being celebrated with screenings of Certified Copy (2010), Three Colors: Blue (1993) and In-I in Motion (2025), the documentary she directed about her 2007 collaboration with dancer Akram Khan. She confirmed her next acting role is in Merci, Charlotte, the third film by Turkish writer-director Berkun Oya, which begins shooting at the end of August and casts her as a French woman who adopts a Turkish child. She also revisited her 1997 best supporting actress Oscar win for The English Patient, recalling her surprise and belief that fellow nominee Lauren Bacall would take the prize, and described the overwhelming, disorienting experience of the ceremony itself.