Global Courant 2023-05-05 14:04:30
Damien Chazelle has been announced as the international jury president for the main competition of the 80th Venice International Film Festival, running Aug 30 — Sep 9.
“For ten days each year this city of the arts, of Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese, becomes a city of cinema, and I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead this year’s jury. I can’t wait to discover a new crop of great films at the 80th Venice Film Festival,” Chazelle said.
Chazelle has opened Venice twice. First, with 2016’s La La Land and in 2018 with First Man. La La Land received 14 Academy Awards nominations, winning six including Best Director. Damien Chazelle was the youngest director ever to win the award. First Man, starring Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy, picked up four Academy Awards.
French filmmaker Alice Diop will serve as the President of the “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for Debut Features. Last year, Diop debuted her first narrative feature-length film Saint Omer at Venice, where she picked up both the Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize, and the Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” award. The pic went on to be selected as France’s official selection at the 95th Academy Awards and won the César for best debut film, and the Jean Vigo Prize.
“What a great honor, what a great joy, to have been chosen to preside over the “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film, at a festival that welcomed me and offered me so much last year,” Diop said. “I am happy to pass on the baton this year and to work to see a new voice emerge in the cinematic landscape that the Venice Festival has always sought to renew.”
Elsewhere, Italian director Jonas Carpignano will lead the Orizzonti jury.
Carpignano made his debut with Mediterranea (2015), which screened at Critic’s Week at Cannes and was later nominated for three Spirit Awards and won the Breakthrough Director prize at the Gotham Awards. Two years later, his follow-up, A Ciambra (2017), was selected to represent Italy at the Academy Awards. In 2021, A Chiara, his latest work, played Quinzaine in Cannes, where it won the Europa Cinemas Label award, and later picked up six David di Donatello nominations, winning Best Actress.
“It is a tremendous honor for me to chair the jury of Orizzonti this year, and I am very grateful to the Venice Film Festival for this privilege,” Carpignano said. “Year after year the rich and bold selection of Orizzonti offers us a deep immersion in the world of cinema. I can’t wait to live the emotions and to experience the diverse realities we will come to know in the theaters on the Lido. To have the opportunity to see some of the finest films of the year in one of the most beautiful places in the world is something truly special.”
Chazelle’s jury will award the Golden Lion for Best Film, Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize, Silver Lion for Best Director, Volpi Cups for Best Actress and Best Actor, Special Jury Prize, Award for Best Screenplay, and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress.
Last year, American filmmaker Laura Poitras picked up the Golden Lion with her documentary Nan Goldin doc All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.