We knew since February 28 that Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund would choose his successor this year at the top of the Cannes charts, after his coronation in 2022 (the second). The names of the eight jurors who will accompany him in this task were announced Thursday, May 4.
With an average age of 38, it is a particularly young jury, made up as usual of four women and four men, who, alongside the grating Östlund, will decide between the 21 films in competition, during the 76th edition. of the Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from May 16 to 27. The organizers stressed in a press release that they wanted to "welcome the arrival of a generation of artists who produce, who play, who sing, who write".
The youngest of the group − and arguably the most famous − is American actress and director Brie Larson, 33, revealed by States Of Grace in 2013, winner of an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Room in 2016, and especially known worldwide for embodying since 2019 the superheroine Captain Marvel in the cinematographic universe of the same name. His compatriot Paul Dano, also an actor and filmmaker, known for his often intense characters in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), There Will Be Blood (2007) or more recently The Fabelmans (2022), will also be asked to give his opinion on the films in competition.
A more feminine competition than usual
While the Cannes Film Festival has often been accused of not highlighting women directors enough, this year there will be seven of them competing for the Palme (i.e. a third of the total, a record), while the four women on the jury are all already passed behind the camera. In addition to Brie Larson, who signed in 2017 an unreleased feature film in France, Unicorn Store, it is the Moroccan Maryam Touzani (Le Bleu du Caftan in 2022), the British-Zambian Rungano Nyoni (I'm Not A Witch in 2018) and Frenchwoman Julie Ducournau. The latter, revealed at Critics' Week with Grave in 2016, has already won the Palme d'Or in 2021, with the flamboyant horror thriller Titane.
Alongside them will be Argentinian director Damian Szifron, present once in competition with the comedy Les Nouveaux Sauvages in 2014; the French actor Denis Ménochet, with a brilliant international career since his unforgettable appearance in Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino in 2009 (followed by roles with Ridley Scott, Stephen Frears, Wes Anderson, François Ozon, Rodrigo Sorogoyen or recently Ari Aster); as well as the Afghan writer and director Atiq Rahimi, dean of the group at 61 years old, Goncourt Prize in 2008 with "Syngué sabour", and whose first film, Terre et Cendres, adapted from his own novel, had been unveiled at Un certain look in 2004.
As for the president of the jury, Ruben Östlund, he is part, at 48, of the relatively closed club of double webbed artists, having won the supreme award with The Square in 2017 and Sans Filtre in 2022. Pure product of the Festival directed by Thierry Frémaux, where five of his six feature films have been shown (in one selection or another), the Swede is here, so to speak, at home. Particularly fond of mocking the intellectual bourgeoisie, will he one day draw inspiration from this experience to draw a satire of which he has the secret? At the announcement of his appointment, he declared himself "happy, proud and full of humility", adding that "no other place in the world arouses such a desire for cinema when the curtain rises on a film in competition".
