After nabbing Palme d’Ors for his last two films, Ruben Östlund is selecting this year’s winner of Cannes’ top prize. The Swedish director of “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square” has been appointed jury president for the 76th Cannes Film Festival, it was announced Tuesday.
“I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honor of Jury President for this year’s Competition at the Festival de Cannes,” Östlund said in a statement announcing his appointment. “Nowhere in the film world is the anticipation as strong as when the curtain rises on the films in Competition at the festival. It is a privilege to be part of it, together with the Cannes audience of connoisseurs. I am sincere when I say that cinema culture is in its most important period ever. The cinema has a unique aspect. There, we watch together, and it demands more on what is shown and increases the intensity of the experience. It makes us reflect in a different way than when we dopamine scroll in front of the individual screens.”
“As president, I will remind my colleagues in the jury about the social function of the cinema,” Östlund continued. “A good movie relates to the collective experience, stimulates us to think and makes us want to discuss what we have seen. So let’s watch together!”
Östlund is a favorite of the prestigious French film festival, first competing in the Un Certain Regard category for his 2008 sophomore feature “Involuntary.” In 2014, he won the jury prize for “Force Majeure,” and his next films, 2017’s “The Square” and last year’s “Triangle of Sadness,” competed in the festival’s main competition. Both films received the Palme, and “The Square” received an Oscar nod for Best International Feature Film. At this year’s Oscars, “Triangle of Sadness” is nominated for Best Picture, and Östlund also received Best Screenplay and Best Director nods for the film. He is the first Swedish jury president at Cannes since Ingrid Bergman in 1976, and the third two-time Palme winner to head the jury, after Francis Ford Coppola and Emir Kusturica.
Other members of the Cannes jury have yet to be announced; Last year’s jury was presided over by “Titane” and “Both Sides of the Blade” actor Vincent Lindon, and featured Rebecca Hall, Asghar Farhadi, Jeff Nichols, Noomi Rapace, Joachim Trier, Jasmine Trinca, Deepika Padukone, and Ladj Ly.
This year’s festival will run from May 16 to May 27. Early titles projected to make the lineup include Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Pedro Almodóvar’s gay cowboy short “Strange Way of Life.”
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