Juliette Binoche dedicates her International Goya to Carlos Saura, the director who moved her with 'Cría Cuervos'

The French actress Juliette Binoche, muse of European auteur cinema that this 2023 will celebrate four decades of professional career for which she has been distinguished with the Oscar, the César, the Bafta and the interpretation awards at the festivals of Cannes, Berlin, Venice and San Sebastián, has received the International Goya awarded by the Film Academy with great emotion from the hands of Isabel Coixet. “She is the woman in which all women are. She is cinema without borders,” the Catalan filmmaker, with whom she worked on Nadie quiere la noche, has said of her.

With all the attendees standing and applauding, Binoche kissed his Goya and addressed Coixet: “Thank you Isabel. You are wonderful. You have been someone who has known how to capture life. You have had a great culture and curiosity.” Immediately afterwards, he addressed the audience: “Hello Spain, Hello Seville. Thanks to the academy for this wonderful Goya and congratulations to Spanish cinema”, he said in a mixture of Spanish and Italian. And he continued: “This Goya is not for me, it is for the burning desire that invades me, for the fire that inhabits me but does not belong to me. It is that force that sprouts (…) it is a burning desire that I must share. I have to give hope, I can’t just keep it. You have to give happiness, it’s not enough to be honest in front of the camera. I’ve been working as an actress for 40 years and there are many people I want to thank for the award. But tonight I would like to pay homage to a director who moved me with the eyes of that little girl”, he stated, referring to Carlos Saura without having to name him, because this Goya gala was that of the director who modernized Spanish cinema, who died yesterday the day before collect his Goya de Honor.

And he finished his brief and exciting speech, with tears in his eyes, humming the ‘why are you leaving’ that Jeanette sang in the film Cría cuervos by the Aragonese director, a film that, as he already said on the red carpet before starting the gala “stayed with me forever”.