Cannes 2020: Selection committee for 73rd festival reaches gender parity

Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Festival de Cannes, Christian Jeune, Director of the Film Department and Deputy General Delegate, and Stéphanie Lamome, Artistic Advisor of the Film Department (a member of the Selection Committee for 10 years), have announced the 2020 Selection Committee of the 73rd edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which didn’t just reach gender parity but surpassed it; there are five women and four men.

The Cannes Film Festival has been under fire for its lack of female directors heading up the In Competition films up for the coveted Palme d’Or. Last year, of 19 films, there were four directed by women. That paltry number was actually a record-trying number from 2011. In total, 13 of the 47 films in the 2019 official selections were directed by women, or about 28%. That’s a smaller percentage than the 2019 Sundance or 2018 Toronto festivals but is an incremental improvement on most previous editions of Cannes, who have made steps towards reaching some sort of parity. Jane Campion (The Piano) remains the only female director to have won the Palme d’Or but even that was a tie with a male director, Farewell My Concubine‘s Kaige Chen.

The 73rd Cannes Film Festival runs May 12-23, 2020.

Here is the full list committee list.

VIRGINIE APIOU

After studying Modern Literature at la Sorbonne, Virginie Apiou became a journalist for the written press. She also directs TV documentaries about Cinema (CANAL+, Warner, TCM for: Hitchcock — La Mort aux trousses or Hitchcock — Le crime était presque parfait, Les Acteurs-Réalisateurs, etc.) as well as reports for ARTE (Max Ophüls, Gabin-Renoir, Abel Gance, David Cronenberg, Abbas Kiarostami and Lars von Trier).

PAUL GRANDSARD

Paul Grandsard, of French-American descent, worked as a translator before directing six short films between 1987 and 2006. In 1996, he became a programmer for the Premiers Plans festival in Angers before joining the Festival de Cannes in 1999. Since 2010, he has been a professional photographer, specialising in portrait and architectural photography.

LAURENT JACOB

After studying Medicine briefly, Laurent Jacob became a trainee director and then second assistant to Claude Lelouch, Claude Sautet, Nadine Trintignant, Laurent Heynemann and Jean-Jacques Annaud. He then made montage films about history of Cinema for the Festival de Cannes (Le Cinéma dans les yeux, Liberté, two series of Préludes). He was in charge of the Cinéfondation selection from 1998 to 2009.

STÉPHANIE LAMOME

After completing a literature foundation course (also known as Khâgne), Stéphanie Lamome, from 1997 to 2015, worked as a journalist, reporter, critic, head of department and then deputy editor-in-chief of Première magazine. She was an on-air programmer for Radio Festival, the official radio of the Festival de Cannes, between 2017 and 2019. In 2019, she was appointed Artistic Advisor of the Film Department, working alongside Thierry Frémaux and Christian Jeune. 

ÉRIC LIBIOT

From 1986 to 2000, Éric Libiot was a radio host (Radio Beur), TV journalist (“Ensemble aujourd’hui”), freelance print journalist (7 à Paris, Marianne, Paris Match, Max, L’autre journal), reporter and deputy editor-in-chief of Première. In 2000, he became deputy editor-in-chief of Arts and Entertainment at L’Express magazine and Culture editor-in-chief in 2016. That same year, he also became a columnist at France Inter (“Grand bien vous fasse” by Ali Rebeihi). In September 2019, he left L’Express. Today, Éric Libiot works for Lire and Astérios Spectacles while still a contributor at France Inter. He is currently writing a book on Clint Eastwood.

LUCIEN LOGETTE

Holding a PHD in comparative literature, Lucien Logette was the winner of the 2018 Prix Bernard-Chardère.

Co-editor of the Larousse mondial du cinéma (2011) and the Dictionnaire mondial des mouvements artistiques et littéraires 1870-2010 (2012), film columnist for La Quinzaine littéraire (1993-2015) and staff writer at 1895, Revue d’histoire du Cinéma, Lucien Logette has been editor-in-chief of the monthly Jeune Cinéma since 1990.

JOHANNA NAHON

Script doctor and producer, Johanna Nahon began working in production under Charles Gillibert in 2015. She then joined the film production and international sales company Celluloid Dreams, where she headed up the purchasing department from 2016 to 2018. In 2019, she created a development fund and a production company and worked on several projects as a consultant. 

GUILLEMETTE ODICINO

Journalist, critic and head of the Cinema department at Télérama, Guillemette Odicino produces the summer show “On s’fait des films” at France Inter, where she is also a Culture and Cinema columnist. She regularly contributes to the programme “Le Cercle”, broadcast on CANAL+ and CANAL+ Cinéma. Co-author of Toscan, papa et moi published by Editions de la Martinière and editor-in-chief of several special editions on Marilyn Monroe, Louis de Funès and animated films.

CAROLINE VEUNAC

Caroline Veunac researched her thesis on The Symbol of the Double in American Cinema at Sciences-Po Bordeaux. A graduate of the Centre de Formation des Journalistes, she wrote her first film reviews for the magazine Cinéastes, before working on a number of magazine titles. From 2016 to 2017, she was editor-in-chief of the TV show Plus de Séries, on CANAL+ Séries and is now a regular contributor to the film and TV website Somewhere Else.

Finally, the Festival de Cannes is glad to be supported by a network of correspondents. Among them: Didier Allouch, Joël Chapron, Isabelle Glachant, Agnès Poirier, José Maria Riba, Yuka Sakano and Ilda Santiago.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

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), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) 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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