Damien Chazelle to head competition jury at Venice; Alice Diop, Jonas Carpignano lead Debut Film and Horizons juries

Academy Award-winning U.S. director Damien Chazelle will preside over the competition jury of the upcoming 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 30 to September 9.

Two of Chazelle’s previous Oscar-winning films, 2016’s La La Land and 2018’s First Man, opened the festival on the Lido. “For 10 days each year this city of the arts, of Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese, becomes a city of cinema, and I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead this year’s jury,” he said. “I can’t wait to discover a new crop of great films at the 80th Venice Film Festival.”

French director Alice Diop will head the jury panel of the festival’s Luigi De Laurentiis Award for best debut film, an award she won here just last year with her first feature film, Saint Omer, along with the fest’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize. Italy’s Jonas Carpignano, a Venice winner for his 2011 short film A Chjàna, will be president of the jury of the edgier Horizons section.

“What a great honour, what a great joy, to have been chosen to preside over the Luigi De Laurentiis Venice Award for a Debut Film, at a festival that welcomed me and offered me so much last year,” said Diop. “I am happy to pass on the baton this year and to work to see a new voice emerge in the cinematic landscape that the Venice Festival has always had at sought to renew.”

Said Carpignano, “Year after year the rich and bold selection of Horizons offers us a deep immersion in the world of cinema. I can’t wait to live the emotions and to experience the diverse realities we will come to know in the theatres on the Lido. To have the opportunity to see some of the finest films of the year in one of the most beautiful places in the world is something truly special.”