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

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.