Six jurors join president Penn
Presided by US actor-director Sean Penn, the list of members of the competition jury for the 61st Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25) was partially revealed today in Paris.
Jury members include Italian actor-director Sergio Castellitto, French-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb, Romanian-born German actress Alexandra Maria Lara, US/Israeli actress Natalie Portman, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron. The names of the two other jury members have yet to be announced.
The jury for the Cinéfondation film schools competition will be presided by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien. The juries for the Un Certain Regard and Caméra d’Or sections will be headed, respectively, by German director Fatih Akin and French filmmaker Bruno Dumont.
During the press conference announcing the official selection, the president of the Cannes Film Festival Gilles Jacob and the delegate general Thierry Frémeaux pointed out that the event is entering a new phase that will place even greater emphasis on artistic merit.
How will this be achieved? By reducing the prolific line-up that often includes formatted films and by focusing on the festival’s primary aim, which is to show films and help them flourish.
Whilst specifying that the selection process had been complicated this year by the fact that films by major European directors and Cannes competition regulars (Almodovar, von Trier, Loach) remained uncompleted, Frémeaux nonetheless emphasised that there had also been a desire to uncover fresh talent for the 2008 line-up, which he described as “enticing”.
The Cannes team received a total of 1,792 submissions (+11% compared to 2007 and +50% compared to the five previous years). The festival will screen 49 officially selected features (including 48 international premieres) from 31 different countries.
(Translated from French)
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