DUBAI: Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki will serve as a jury member at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, running from May 14 – 25, jury president Greta Gerwig announced.
Other members of the jury include Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan; US actress Lily Gladstone; French actress Eva Green; Spanish director, producer, and screenwriter Juan Antonio Bayona; Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino; Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu; and French actor-producer Omar Sy.
The jury will take on the job of bestowing the coveted Palme d’Or upon one of the 22 films in competition.
Labaki, recipient of the Jury Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for “Capernaum,” shares a long history with the festival.
Labaki began her relationship with Cannes in 2004, writing and developing her first feature, “Caramel,” at the Cinéfoundation Residency before showcasing the film at the Director’s Fortnight in 2007. Both of Labaki’s subsequent films — “Where do We Go Now?” in 2011 and “Capernaum” in 2018 — debuted at the festival, each in increasingly competitive categories.
“I feel like I’m their baby, in a way. With a baby you start watching their first steps, see them grow, protect them, push them… They’ve accompanied me in this journey, and recognized and encouraged me. It’s great — I really love this festival. I think it’s the best festival in the world,” Labaki told Arab News in an earlier interview on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.
Nadine Labaki with "Capernaum" star Zain Al-Rafeea in California. (File/Getty Images)
“Capernaum” also went on to be nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, with Labaki becoming the first woman from the Arab world to receive that honor.
This won’t be the first time Labaki is serving on a Cannes jury either. In 2018, Labaki was the president of the Un Certain Regard jury, the first Arab to do so.
“I don’t watch films as a filmmaker. Never,” she said at the time. “I watch the film as a human being… I don’t like the word jury. I don’t like to judge because I’ve been there. I’ve been in those very difficult situations, very fragile situations, where you’re making a film, where you’re doubting, where you don’t know, where you don’t have enough distance with what you’re doing, and you don’t have the right answers and you’re not taking the right decisions.”
Meanwhile, Moroccan director, screenwriter and producer Asmae El-Moudir will be part of the Un Certain Regard jury at the festival this year.
She will be joined by French Senegalese screenwriter and director Maïmouna Doucouré, German Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps and American film critic, director, and writer Todd McCarthy.
Xavier Dolan will be the president of the Un Certain Regard jury.
The team will oversee the awarding of prizes for the Un Certain Regard section, which highlights art and discovery films by emerging auteurs, from a selection of 18 works, including eight debut films.
