PARIS, April 29 — French screen stars Omar Sy and Eva Green will be part of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival next month, organisers announced today.
Also joining them is Oscar-nominated actor Lily Gladstone, who won a string of awards for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon. At 37 years old, she will be the youngest member of the jury.
They will join a jury led by Barbie director Greta Gerwig at this year’s festival on France’s Cote d’Azur, which runs from May 14 to 25.
The jury is tasked with selecting the winner of the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize, from a selection of 22 films that include the return of Francis Ford Coppola with his long-awaited epic, Megalopolis.
A biopic of Donald Trump, The Apprentice, by Iran-born director Ali Abbasi, is also in the running.
Sy is one of the biggest names in French cinema, known internationally for hit Netflix show Lupin.
Green was one of the most memorable James Bond actors (Casino Royale) and has appeared in a string of Hollywood blockbusters.
The jury also includes Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the 2018 Palme d’Or for Shoplifters, Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki and Turkish screenwriter Ebru Ceylan.
There have also been some late additions to the festival’s line-up in recent days.
They include The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who has faced prison time for criticising the government. It is unclear if he will be able to attend the festival.
Oliver Stone will present his latest documentary, Lula, about the current president of Brazil, out of competition.
And Emma Stone will team up again with Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos in Kinds of Kindness.
Poor Things, their 2023 collaboration, won Lanthimos the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, while Stone picked up an Oscar for Best Actress.
Writer-director Paul Schrader reunites with his American Gigolo star Richard Gere for Oh Canada, and Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino pens another love letter to his native Naples with Parthenope, starring Gary Oldman.
France’s own Jacques Audiard a past winner of the Palme d’Or, is back with Emilia Perez, billed as a musical comedy about a Mexican cartel boss undergoing a sex-change operation. Pop star-actor Selena Gomez appears in a supporting role.
But all eyes will be on Coppola’s Megalopolis, marking the return of The Godfather director to Cannes at the age of 85.
He has twice won the Palme d’Or — for The Conversation (1974) and, controversially, for Apocalypse Now (1979), which was not even finished when it premiered at the festival. — AFP
