Alexander Payne to chair Venice’s competition jury
- The US director will preside over the jury comprising nine familiar faces from the film and culture sectors, which will hand out the Golden Lion for Best Film and the other official prizes
US director Alexander Payne will have the honour of chairing the international competition jury at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival (27 August-6 September). Payne, the man behind such films as The Holdovers, Sideways, Nebraska, Downsizing and The Descendants, will preside over the jury made up of a maximum of nine familiar faces from the film and culture sectors, hailing from various countries, which will hand out the Golden Lion for Best Film and the other official prizes.
Accepting the invitation, Payne stated: “It’s an enormous honour and joy to serve on the jury at Venice. Although I share a filmmaker’s ambivalence about comparing films against one another, I revere the Venice Film Festival’s nearly 100-year history of loudly celebrating film as an art form. I couldn’t be more excited.”
Artistic director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera remarked: “Alexander Payne belongs to the small circle of filmmakers-cinephiles whose passion for cinema is fuelled by knowledge of the films of the past and curiosity about contemporary cinema, without boundaries or barriers of any kind. These qualities – along with his experience as a screenwriter – make him an ideal candidate to preside over the work of the Venice jury, which is called upon to evaluate films from around the world. I am grateful to Alexander for accepting my invitation, which seals an acquaintance that goes back to the days of his graduation short film at UCLA.”
Payne’s films have been nominated for a total of 24 Oscars, including four times for Best Picture and three times for Best Director. Payne has won twice for Best Adapted Screenplay – for Sideways (2004) and The Descendants (2011) – and his latest effort, The Holdovers (2023), scooped the prestigious Best Supporting Actress statuette last year (for Da'Vine Joy Randolph). He is currently preparing a new film to be shot in rural Denmark.
(Translated from Italian)
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