2025 Venice Film Festival: Fernanda Torres, Mohammad Rasoulof, Cristian Mungiu, Zhao Tao Join President Alexander Payne’s Jury
Alexander Payne’s jury for this year’s Venice Film Festival has been announced and will include Oscar-nominated Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here), Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), Palme d’Or-winning Romanian director-writer-producer Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), French director Stéphane Brizé (Out of Season), Italian director Maura Delpero (Vermiglio) and Chinese actor and producer Zhao Tao (Caught by the Tides).
The 82nd edition of Venice will run August 27-September 6. Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, starring Academy Award winner Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri has already been announced for a competition slot. The full lineup will be announced on July 22.
The jury will oversee the festival’s competition prizes: the Golden Lion for Best Film, Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, Silver Lion for Best Director, Coppa Volpi for Best Actress, Coppa Volpi for Best Actor, Best Screenplay, th Special Jury Prize, and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for new young actor or actress.
Last year’s winners included Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door for Best Film, Brady Corbet won Best Director for The Brutalist (who went on to a Best Director Oscar nomination) and Nicole Kidman won Best Actress for Babygirl.
Palme d’Or-winning French director Julia Ducournau (Titane) will preside over the Horizons (Orizzonti) section, which focuses on edgier, more experimental films, with a jury that includes Italian director and video artist Yuri Ancarani (The Challenge, Atlantide), Argentine film critic Fernando Enrique Juan Lima, Australian director Shannon Murphy (Babyteeth) and Oscar-nominated American filmmaker RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys).
Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells (the Oscar-nominated Aftersun, that catapulted Paul Mescal’s career) will head the jury for the Luigi de Laurentiis Award for best first work across all Venice sections, which includes a cash award of $100,000. French-Tunisian director and producer Erige Sehiri (Promised Sky) and Italian director Silvio Soldini round out her jury.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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