Categories: Cannes Film Festival

Juliette Binoche to Preside over Jury of the 78th Cannes Film Festival

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Exactly 40 years after her first appearance on La Croisette, award-winning French actress Juliette Binoche will preside over the Jury of the 78th Festival de Cannes, which will award the Palme d’Or on Saturday, May 24.

Binoche will succeed American director Greta Gerwig, marking only the second time in the Festival’s history, one woman in film will take up the torch from another. Last year, Gerwig’s jury awarded Sean Baker’s Anora the Palme d’Or. The film is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

“I’m looking forward to sharing these life experiences with the members of the Jury and the public. In 1985, I walked up the steps for the first time with the enthusiasm and uncertainty of a young actress; I never imagined I’d return 40 years later in the honorary role of President of the Jury. I appreciate the privilege, the responsibility and the absolute need for humility,” said Binoche of the honor.

“I was born at the Festival de Cannes,” Binoche often states, as her first major role came in André Téchiné’s Rendez-vous, which premiered in Cannes in 1985. Four decades later, she has become an international star, that has attracted filmmakers from a constellation without borders: Michael Haneke (Austria), David Cronenberg and Abel Ferrara (USA), Olivier Assayas, Leos Carax and Claire Denis (France), Amos Gitaï (Israel), Naomi Kawase and Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Poland), and Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan).

An Oscar, BAFTA and César award winner, as well as Best Actress wins from Berlin and Venice, it was Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy which won her the Best Actress award in Cannes in 2010. Directed by an Iranian director in the Tuscan countryside, opposite a British opera singer, Juliette Binoche illuminates this universal story mixing love and art and their false pretenses to better grasp their truth. After her fifth film in the Official Selection, four more followed, including Trần Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things in 2023.

Whether it’s education, undocumented immigration, or human rights in Iran (she protested in Cannes against the imprisonment of Jafar Panahi, and brandished a placard with his name on stage), Binoche, the brand-new President of the European Film Academy, also stands in the essential wake of the #MeToo movement, sharing generously and responsibly the unsettling experiences of her beginnings. She also regularly uses her influence to raise awareness of the ecological dangers threatening our planet.

Cannes’s president Iris Knobloch was just re-elected for a second three-year term at the helm of the festival.

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will take place May 13-24, 2025. Curated by Cannes Film Festival’s artistic director Thierry Fremaux and his selection committee, the festival’s Official Selection will be unveiled in mid-April.

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), 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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