We’ve known for a while now that actress and writer and director supreme, Greta Gerwig, would head the Jury for the Official Selection for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The Jury will watch and convene for great lengths on the 22 films in Competition, and be responsible for announcing the award recipients on the final day of the festival on Saturday 25th May during the Closing Ceremony. President Gerwig made a name for herself as one of the very great indie quirky girl actresses, bringing an organic vibrancy, charm and wit to the screen in films like Frances Ha and Greenburg, with her filmmaker spouse Noah Baumbach. Then of course, made sweet history by gaining Best Picture nominations in her first three writer-director outings with Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie. The latter made her the first director to reach the billion dollar box office heights.
So who else is on the Jury?
Not just the spouse of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan is a Turkish filmmaker in her own right. With a background in photography and short films, she is also an actress, art director and co-writer of multiple Cannes prize-winning feature films including Distant, Climates, Three Monkeys, Once upon a time in Anatolia, The Wild Pear Tree, About Dry Grasses, and the Palme d’Or winning Winter Sleep.
Japanese director, Kore-eda Hirokazu, is also no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival, only last year his movie Monster took the Best Screenplay prize. There’s a Jury Prize with Like Father, Like Son. And twice his films have garnered a Best Actor award, with Broker and Nobody Knows (Yuya Yagira is the youngest ever winner at the age of 12). Kore-eda has also ventured to the South of France with his films Distance, Air Doll, Our little Sister, After the Storm, and, of course, handed the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters.
Another Jury Prize recipient for the exceptional, moving Capernaum, is Nadine Labaki. The filmmaker has been integral in bringing Lebanese cinema to the public eye. Labaki has dabbled in music videos and commercials, and resulting in her participating in the Résidence de la Cinéfondation in Cannes she went on to make Caramel. Her next film, Where Do We Go Now? also featured at the Festival de Cannes in the in the Un Certain Regard selection.
Fresh off a huge year-long limelight moment for her performances in the lesser-seen The Unknown Country, and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone was the first Native American to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. But it was Kelly Reichardt’s slow-burner, Certain Women, when Gladstone broke out to film audiences, with a subtle, unforgettable turn that gained rave reviews.
You might well recognise the Italian actor, Pierfrancesco Favino, from his role in Ron Howard’s films, Angels and Demons and Rush. Favino has also been to Cannes a few times, the actor received high praise and award recognition for his performance as Tommaso Buscetta in The Traitor, Marco Bellocchio’s film which was in Competition. As was Mario Martone’s Nostalgia a few years later.
Juan Antonio Bayona has certainly crafted a household name for himself in the film-making world. Not only did his chiller, The Orphanage, lavish audiences with positive goosebumps, he adapted A Monster Calls, and then last year the Academy Award nominated Society of the Snow was one of the best reviewed films of 2023. The Spanish filmmaker has also swept up recognition for The Impossible and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
A former winner of the BAFTA Rising Star award, French actress, Eva Green, is extremely well-known as – in the eyes of this particular editor – one of the finest Bond girl characters ever to grace the screen in Casino Royale. More recently, Green has made a bigger name for herself with the TV series, Penny Dreadful. Her cinematic break-out role was in Bernardo Bertolucci’s extraordinary The Dreamers, and has since shone brightly in the likes of Kingdom of Heaven, Perfect Sense, and Alice Winocour’s Proxima.
French actor Omar Sy has starred in an array of varied roles including Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Roschdy Zem’s Chocolat, and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Lost Prince. Further English-language success was found in Jurassic World films, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Inferno. He has appeared at Cannes previously in Father & Soldier, but it is the terrific The Intouchables that stands out as his greatest accolade, including a Best Actor win at the Césars.
