The Cannes International Film Festival announced, on Saturday, the jury that will decide on winners for the event which runs from 27 to 29 October.
The event marks the Festival’s return to its home turf, in a homecoming that puts the emphasis on short films and up-and-coming directors.
As every year, the Jury for Short Films and the Cinéfondation film school competition will be awarding the Short Film Palme d’Or to one of the 11 films in competition. There will be three Cinéfondation prizes awarded to the best of the 17 selected films by film school students.
The festival said that this year’s Jury demonstrates complete gender equality of three women and three men, and will have no Chair for the very first time.
The Jury is comprised of:
Claire Burger – director & screenwriter (France)
Burger is a French director and screenwriter, who co-directed her first feature film, 2014’s Party Girl, with Marie Amachoukeli and Samuel Theis. In 2018, Burger drew on her own experience to write and direct C’est ça l’amour (Real Love), a film which crafted a sensitive and moving portrait of a father played by Bouli Lanners.
Damien Bonnard – actor (France)
Bonnard emerged onto the scene in 2016 with Alain Guiraudie’s Rester vertical (Staying Vertical), in which he played a wayward screenwriter. The film was screened at the Festival de Cannes. Bonnard is now a familiar face in the French film industry. After working with Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk, 2017), he dazzled in Pierre Salvadori’s comedy En liberté (The Trouble with You). In 2019, he starred in Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables, which won the Festival de Cannes’ Jury Prize and four Césars, as well as in J’Accuse (An Officer and a Spy) by Roman Polanski, which won the Venice Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize.
Rachid Bouchareb – director, screenwriter & producer (France)
The French director, producer, and screenwriter burst onto the scene as a short film director, before going on to found his 3B Productions production company. Throughout his career, he has tirelessly questioned history through his many feature films, including: Cheb, which won him an award at 1991’s Festival de Cannes; Indigènes (Days of Glory), the film on everybody’s lips in 2006, for which the entire cast was awarded the Best Actor Award; and Hors la Loi (Outside the Law), which saw him back in Competition in 2010. He went on to film an American trilogy: Just Like a Woman (2012), Two Men in Town (2014) and Belleville Cop (2018).
Charles Gillibert – producer (France)
After several years at the MK2 group producing work by leading international filmmakers (including Gus Van Sant, Abdellatif Kechiche, Xavier Dolan), Gillibert founded CG Cinéma in 2013. The company’s strategy is clear-cut: to support and showcase incredible directors, and to put arthouse cinema back where it belongs, at the beating heart of the film industry. His productions have met with acclaim: Mustang by Deniz Gamze Ergüven had everybody talking in Cannes 2015, before going on to win four Césars, and Personal Shopper by Olivier Assayas, which won the Best Director Award at the 2005 Cannes Festival. He has also worked on Un couteau dans le cœur (Knife+Heart) by Yann Gonzalez, which was screened at Cannes in 2018, as was Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Bi Gan, as part of Un Certain Regard.
Dea Kulumbegashvili – director & screenwriter (Georgia)
Kulumbegashvili is a Georgian director and screenwriter. Her first short film, Ukhilavi sivrtseebi (Invisible Spaces) was in Competition at Cannes in 2014. In 2015, she worked on her first feature film, Dasatskisi (Beginning), at the Cinéfondation’s Résidence. Showcased as part of the 2020 Cannes Official Selection, the film has just been awarded the Golden Shell for Best Film and the awards for best director, screenwriter, and actor (Ia Sukhitashvili) at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The film, Dasatskisi, also won the Fipresci International Film Critics Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Céline Sallette – actor (France)
The multi-talented French actor Céline Sallette has starred alongside Philippe Garrel, Clint Eastwood, Jacques Audiard and Pascal Bonitzer. In 2012, her performance in L’Apollonide, souvenirs de la maison close (House of Tolerance) by Bertrand Bonello was showcased in Competition at the Cannes festival, and afforded her one César nomination and the Romy Schneider Award. Best-known for her performance in the series Les Revenants (The Returned), she also starred in Nos années folles (Golden Years) by André Téchiné (2017), and Un peuple et son roi (One Nation, One King) by Pierre Schoeller (2018).
