Greta Gerwig has her jury. This evening, the Cannes Film Festival revealed the rest of the nine-member jury filled with festival veterans and Academy members. This year’s jury includes screenwriter and director Ebru Ceylan (Turkey), actress Lily Gladstone (United States), actress Eva Green (France), director and screenwriter Nadine Labaki (Lebanon), director and screenwriter Juan Antonio Bayona (Spain), actor Pierfrancisco Favino (Italy), director Kore-eda Hirokazu (Japan), and actor and producer Omar Sy (France).
Seven of this year’s jury members, including jury president Greta Gerwig, are still believed to be members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. So, you may want to pay attention when they like a movie. Just like the love eventual Oscar nominees “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Zone of Interest,” “Four Daughters,” and “Perfect Days” received from Ruben Östlund’s 2023 jury almost a year ago.
While Gerwig has never had a film she truly starred in or created at Cannes (she did voice a character in “The Meyerowitz Chronicles”) many of her colleagues are regulars on la Croisette. Gladstone, Sy, Favino, and Green have all had films screened at the festival. Labaki won the jury prize for “Capernaum” in 2018, Ceylan co-wrote and starred in the 2014 Palme d’Or winner “Winter Sleep,” and Kore-eda won the Palme in 2018 for “Shoplifters.”
The jury will be responsible for screening the 22 films in competition and awarding the prestigious Palme d’Or. The last film almost completely in the English language to win was “Triangle of Sadness” just two years ago. There are 10 English language films in competition this year, a modern record. Whether any of them can win remains to be seen.
The festival provided official bios for each of the new jurors. They are as follows:
EBRU CEYLAN
Co-writer of the 2014 Palme d’or-winning Winter Sleep, Ebru Ceylan was born in Ankara. She began making photographs at an early age and participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Turkey and abroad. She studied cinema at university in Istanbul. Her first short film Kiyida (On the Edge), has been selected for the Short Films Competition at the Festival de Cannes in 1998. She served as an actress and art director in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s early films like Distant (2002) and Climates (2006) ; and co-wrote Three Monkeys (Best Director Prize 2008), Once upon a time in Anatolia (Grand Prix 2011), Winter Sleep (Palme d’or 2014), The Wild Pear Tree (2018) and About Dry Grasses (2023), all selected at the Festival de Cannes. She also writes stories and articles for various literary and art magazines and continues to work on films, photography, and video art.
LILY GLADSTONE
Lily Gladstone is from the Blackfeet and Nez Perce Tribal Nations. She is the first Native American to be Oscar-nominated for Best Actress in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, premiered at the Festival de Cannes 2023, and she won the 2023 Golden Globe and the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Award for the same. She was named Best Actress of 2023 by the New York Film Critics Circle and The National Board of Review, among many others. Lily’s breakout in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women earned her Best Supporting Actress by the LA Critics Film Association, Boston Society of Film Critics and others. Her turn in Morrisa Maltz’s The Unknown Country garnered her Outstanding Lead Performance at the 2023 Gothams. She can be seen in Hulu’s limited series Under the Bridge and will next be seen in Apple’s series by Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance.
EVA GREEN
World-renowned actress, Eva Green first appeared in plays as Turcaret et Jalousie en trois fax (2002) for which she was nominated for Les Molières, before going on the silver screen in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Innocents: The Dreamers (2003). She alternates between Hollywood productions – Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2004), Casino Royale (2006), 300: The Birth of an empire (2014), Sin City: I Killed for Her (2014) – and independent cinema David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense (2011), Gregg Araki’s White Bird (2014), Alice Winocour’s Proxima (2019). She received in 2007 the BAFTA Rising Star award. Eva also made a name for herself in the fantasy series Penny Dreadful. Close friend of Tim Burton, with whom she has made three films – Dark Shadows (2012), Miss Peregrine and the Peculiar Children (2016), Dumbo (2017) – she recently played in the French blockbuster The Three Musketeers.
NADINE LABAKI
Awarded with the Jury Prize at the Festival de Cannes 2018 with her powerful Capernaum, also nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Nadine Labaki has been weaving a story with the Festival for many years. After signing award-winning commercials and music videos, she took part in La Résidence de la Cinéfondation of the Festival de Cannes in 2004 to write and develop Caramel, her first feature film, a joyfully impertinent ode to female solidarity and the biggest success of Lebanese cinema abroad. In 2011, she presented Where Do We Go Now? in the Un Certain Regard selection, a bold, universal fable about tolerance, and in 2014, she directed O Milagre for the sketch film Rio, I Love You. She is currently working on her next film.
JUAN ANTONIO BAYONA
Juan Antonio Bayona has established himself as one of Spain’s most acclaimed filmmakers, resonating with audiences and critics all over the world. His debut film, The Orphanage, premiered at la Semaine de la Critique in 2007 where it received a standing ovation. In 2012, he directed The Impossible, which won five Goya Awards, including Best Director, and was nominated for the Oscar and Golden Globe awards in the category of Best Actress for Naomi Watts. In 2016 he directed A Monster Calls, followed by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the fifth installment of the Jurassic Park film series. His latest film, the Academy Award-nominated Society of the Snow, has been celebrated for its deep humanism and technical prowess, won twelve Goya Awards, and is a testament to his mastery of the craft.
PIERFRANCESCO FAVINO
The most prominent Italian actor of his generation, Pierfrancesco Favino has gained recognition with Gabriele Muccino’s debut hit The Last Kiss (2001). Awarded for his performance in Michele Placido’s Romanzo Criminale (2005), he pursued a parallel career in Hollywood with Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons and Rush, Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna and Marc Foster’s World War Z. In 2018, he played the role of Tommaso Buscetta in Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor, presented in Competition at the Festival de Cannes 2019, and returns in 2022 with Mario Martone’s Nostalgia, also in Competition. In between, he shoots Hammamet by Gianni Amelio and Padrenostro by Claudio Noce (2020), for which he wins the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival. He recently worked with Pablo Larraìn on Maria and Gabriele Salvatores on Naples to New York.
KORE-EDA HIROKAZU
orn in Tokyo, Japan, Kore-eda Hirokazu graduated from Waseda University in 1987. He started directing several prize-winning documentary programs for television. His directorial debuts, Maborosi (1995) and After Life (1998) brought him international acclaim. Many of his films were selected at the Festival de Cannes including Distance (2001), Nobody Knows (Best Actor Award, 2004), Air Doll (2009), Like Father, Like Son (Jury Prize, 2013), Our little Sister (2015) and After the Storm (2016). In 2018, Shoplifters won the Palme d’or at the 71st Festival de Cannes as well as being nominated for the 91st Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has reached a turning point in international co-production, The Truth (2019) in France, and Broker (Best Actor Award, 2022) in Korea. In 2023, his latest feature Monster won Best Screenplay at the 76th Festival de Cannes.
OMAR SY
Winner of the César for Best Actor in Éric Toledano & Olivier Nakache’s The Intouchables (2011), Omar Sy has distinguished himself in all genres: Tellement proches (2009), Samba (2014) by Toledano & Nakache, Micmacs (2009) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mood Indigo (2013) by Michel Gondry, Chocolat (2016) by Roschdy Zem, Yao (2019) by Philippe Godeau, The Lost Prince (2020) by Michel Hazanavicius. Also internationally: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Jurassic World (2015-2022), Ron Howard’s Inferno (2016). In 2022, he starred in Mathieu Vadepied’s Father & Soldier, the Opening film of the Un Certain Regard section at the Festival de Cannes. He will next be seen in Joe Carnahan’s Shadow Force and John Woo’s The Killer. In 2023, he founded the production studio Carrousel Studios with Louis Leterrier and Thomas Benski.
The Cannes Film Festival will run from Tuesday, May 14 – Saturday, May 25. Look for complete coverage on The Playlist.