Photo by Godlis.

The Close-Up, the Film Society's weekly podcast series is featuring a two-part conversation with French filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Special guests include actresses Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart, who co-star in his latest film, Clouds of Sils Maria, opening in theaters next weekend.

Clouds of Sils Maria, a main-slate selection of last year’s New York Film Festival, stars Binoche as a veteran actress coming to terms with her life and career after agreeing to act in a revival of the play that made her famous 20 years earlier. Stewart plays her assistant, who accompanies her on a soul-searching journey through the Sils Maria region of the Swiss Alps.

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Assayas has been called the most innovative and influential French director of his generation, and his relationship to the New York Film Festival goes all the back to 1996, when his film Irma Vep was included in that year’s festival.

Preceding the official NYFF52 screening of Clouds of Sils Maria, Assayas joined Binoche and Stewart onstage for a conversation with press, moderated by the festival’s director of programming, Kent Jones. The discussion will serve as part one of today’s episode.

Part two comes from 2004, when the director took the stage following a screening of his seminal 1996 film, Irma Vep. That film stars Maggie Cheung as herself cast in an ill-fated production of a remake of Louis Feullade's classic silent film serial Les Vampires. This fascinating conversation was also moderated by our own Kent Jones.

Photo by Godlis.