Juliette Binoche confronts aging's difficult questions in Berlin competition entry 'Queen at Sea'

French star Juliette Binoche said on Tuesday that the difficult questions that come with aging, portrayed in her new film "Queen at Sea," could be posed to anyone who has loved ones.

"At a certain point, we have to go through all the questions about how do we take care of our parents, of getting older, and I'm going to get old at a certain point too, so all those questions are very important to anyone," she told Reuters.

"Queen at Sea" premiered on Tuesday at the Berlin Film Festival, where it is competing for the Golden Bear top prize.

Binoche stars as Amanda, who decides to call the police because her stepfather will not stop having sex with her mother with advanced dementia, enmeshing her family in the mechanics of the state where it's unclear if it's doing more help than harm.

British stage actor Anna Calder-Marshall plays Amanda's mother and Tom Courtenay, who received an Oscar nomination for 1983's "The Dresser," is the stepfather in the new film from director, screenwriter and editor Lance Hammer.

Hammer, whose previous feature, "Ballast," competed at the festival 18 years ago, "is such a searcher of truth and authenticity and trying to really come into a subject matter with the most knowledge as possible," said Binoche.

Critics said Hammer's new film was worth the wait, with Variety calling it "striking and emotionally complicated," while IndieWire had high praise for Binoche's "gripping" performance.

-Reporting by Swantje Stein, Writing by Miranda Murray and Nick Zieminski/Reuters