Benjamin Millepied Says Wife Natalie Portman 'Informed a Lot' While Making His Directorial Debut (Exclusive)

Carmen, directed by Benjamin Millepied, is now in select theaters

Benjamin Millepied, a world-renowned dancer, comes to his first feature-length directing gig, Carmen, more than a decade after choreographing Darren Aronofsky's 2010 movie Black Swan.

While working on that movie, Millepied met and fell in love with its star Natalie Portman, and the pair walked away with an Oscar for Portman's performance, as well as a marriage that's lasted over 10 years.

"Yeah, of course. Of course," Millepied, 45, tells PEOPLE when asked whether Portman gave him advice on making his directorial debut with Carmen. "I think also being on set and hearing what ignites her creativity, [as] a director, was something that I had heard."

"It informed a lot of things for me, for sure," he adds of Portman, 41, with whom he shares son Aleph and daughter Amalia. Millepied adds that he and his wife "tend to" share similar tastes in film.

Millepied filmed Carmen, which stars Melissa Barrera and Paul Mescal, in Australia back in 2021. Barrera, 32, recently told PEOPLE at a screening of the movie in New York City that she spent significant downtime with the director and Portman during production, calling the pair "the nicest people ever."

Related:Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied's Relationship Timeline

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"I was by myself completely. So Ben and Natalie took me in and we went to Byron Bay for Christmas and New Year's. It was like a very family kind of thing," the Scream VI actress said of the experience. "It was the other side of the world. I can't— like, the nicest people ever."

The director's modern version of Carmen offers Millepied's reimagining of a centuries-old story he says he first saw as 1983's Spanish-language film of the same name directed by Carlos Saura.

"So many. Every moment," Millepied tells PEOPLE of which moment he was most excited to put on the big screen. "I found the whole thing really exhilarating to make; this choice of camera and creating and finding the right frame and finding the right image was thrilling."

The actor's first feature-length film comes after he choreographed a number of movies after Black Swan — including 2018's Vox Lux, which also starred Portman — and directed a series of short films through the 2010s.

Related:Paul Mescal and Melissa Barrera Fall in Love, Dance Through the Desert in Carmen Teaser Trailer

Millepied says he hopes audiences "feel the emotional journey" of Barrera and Mescal's characters in Carmen, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

"[Carmen's] desire for freedom or freedom as an individual, his journey as a marine who's a ghost, what it's like for these men to come back with so much trauma that their life is forever changed," the director says of what he wants audiences to take away. "And the fact that two people from completely different backgrounds completely fall in love and leave something special where they come from and who they are. [They] find the beauty and the sincerity of their love."

Carmen is now in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles.

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