The Jury of the Competition presided over by Nanni Moretti (Italian director, actor and producer) welcomes to its ranks:

Hiam Abbass (Palestinian actress, director)

Andrea Arnold (British director and scriptwriter)

Emmanuelle Devos (French actress)

Diane Kruger (German actress)

&

Jean Paul Gaultier (French designer)

Ewan McGregor (British actor)

Alexander Payne (American director, scriptwriter and producer)

Raoul Peck (Haitian director, scriptwriter and producer)

The Jury of the 65th Festival de Cannes will have to decide between the 22 films in Competition in order to select the winners, to be announced on stage during the Closing Ceremony on 27th May, culminating in the announcement of the Palme d’or.

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Hiam Abbass was born in Galilee. Following her studies in Haifa she joined Palestine’s El-Hakawati Theatre Group. She first appeared in Michel Khleifi’s Wedding in Galilee (1987). Fame soon followed with Raja Amari’s Red Satin (2002). She appeared in The Syrian Bride (2005) then Lemon Tree (2008) by Eran Riklis , Free Zone and Disengagement by Amos Gitaï (2005) and Bab el Shams by Yousry Nasrallah (2004). She also filmed in France with Patrice Chéreau, Jean Becker and Radu Mihaileanu (The Source – in Competition at Cannes 2011). Her American filmmaking career began with Jim Jarmusch (The Limits of Control – 2009) and Thomas McCarthy (The Visitor – 2008) as well as with Julian Schnabel in Miral, presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2010. She has just finished shooting Inheritance, her first feature film as a director.

Andrea Arnold, British director and scriptwriter, was awarded the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 2004 for Wasp. Her first feature-length film, Red Road (2006), was selected at Cannes in Competition, as was Fish Tank (2009); both received the Jury Prize. In 2011, she directed an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, selected in Competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Following her studies at the prestigious Cours Florent, Emmanuelle Devos began shooting with the brilliant young generation of filmmakers fresh out of La Fémis: Noémie Lvovsky and Arnaud Desplechin who brought her to Cannes in 1996 with his My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument. The accolades arrived in 2001 with Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips (César for Best Actress). She filmed again with Desplechin and Audiard and also with Nicole Garcia, Emmanuel Carrère, Alain Resnais and Xavier Giannoli, whose In The Beginning saw her win the 2010 César for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Still devoted to theatre work, her film career continues unabated. She will soon begin shooting with Martin Provost and with Jérôme Bonnell alongside Gabriel Byrne.

Born in Germany, Diane Kruger received international acclaim in 2004 for her role in Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy. Numerous successes followed, namely Christian Carion’s Joyeux Noël which featured in the Official Selection at Cannes and received an Oscar nomination in 2005 for Best Foreign Language Film. She subsequently worked with Agnieszka Holland, Bille August and Quentin Tarantino. In France, she recently filmed with Fred Cavayé and Fabienne Berthaud. She can currently be seen in Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2012. Most recently, she completed filming of Pascal Chaumeil’s Fly Me to the Moon as well as Andrew Niccol’s The Host.

A world-famous designer who has worked with artists such as Madonna, Angelin Prejlocaj and Régine Chopinot, Jean Paul Gaultier began his career with Pierre Cardin before launching his own fashion house in 1976. Passionate and highly versatile, he has never stopped experimenting in new fields, including dance, music and cinema. He designed the costumes for The City of Lost Children by Jeunet and Caro and for Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. In particular, he has worked with Pedro Almodόvar on Bad Education, which opened the Festival de Cannes in 2004 and on The Skin I Live In, which was in Competition last year. A great cinema-lover, Jean Paul Gaultier has often spoken of his love for actresses or directors such as Jacques Becker.

Ewan McGregor has proven himself as a true international actor. From Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (In Competition, Cannes 1996) to George Lucas’ Star Wars (2002-2005), and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, which opened the Festival in 2001. He demonstrated the full extent of his range in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream, Grant Heslov’s The Men who Stare at Goats (2010) and The Ghost Writer by Roman Polanski (2010). He is currently filming an HBO’s series adaptation of the Jonathan Franzen novel, The Corrections. Following in the footsteps of Jude Law in 2011, Cannes is delighted to welcome this latest representative of the British acting fraternity.

Originally from Nebraska, Alexander Payne earned his MFA in Film at UCLA. He made his feature film debut with Citizen Ruth (1996) and followed up with Election (1999), which won Best Screenplay from the Writers’ Guild of America and the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. About Schmidt (2002), premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. A sensitive director whose inspiration is often drawn from his own filmmaking passions, Payne directed Sideways (2004) as well as his latest film, The Descendants (2011), starring George Clooney, both of which won Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Haitian born Raoul Peck grew up in Congo, France, Germany and the United States. He has created a complex and diverse body of work from documentaries to TV fiction. His feature films include The Man by the Shore (in Competition at Cannes 1993); Lumumba (presented at the Director’s Fortnight 2000). Sometimes in April (2005) was presented in Berlin and Moloch Tropical (2009) in Toronto and Berlin. The former Minister of Culture of Haiti, Raoul Peck has been, since 2010, Chairman of the Board of the film school La Fémis.

Tim Roth to be president of the Un Certain Regard Jury

English actor and director Tim Roth will be the president of the Un Certain Regard Jury, part of the Festival de Cannes Official Selection, for which twenty films will be announced at the same time as those for the Competition during the press conference on April, 19th.

He is an English actor who began his career in television before moving on to cinema with The Hit directed by Stephen Frears, Tim Roth made his first appearances at Cannes with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (Palme d’or, 1994)  which earned him international renown. In 1995, he was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Rob Roy directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Roth directed his first film in 1999: The War Zone, which received nominations at Cannes, Sundance and Toronto. He also appeared in The New World directed by Terrence Malick, Don’t Come Knocking directed by Wim Wenders, Planet of the Apes directed by Tim Burton, Funny Games directed by Michael Haneke and Everyone Says I Love You directed by Woody Allen. Since 2009, he has starred in the lead role of successful American TV series Lie to Me.
Accompanied by a jury made up of artists, journalists and festival directors to be announced in the next few days, Tim Roth will award the Prix Un Certain Regard along with the other awards on Saturday May, 26th, the day before the Festival draws to a close.

The 2011 Prix Un Certain Regard was awarded ex-aequo to Arirang directed by Kim Ki-Duk (Korea) and Halt Auf Freier Strecke (Stopped on Track) by Andreas Dresen (Germany), which has just been released in French cinemas.

The Jury for the Cinéfondation and Short Films

On 23rd May, the Festival de Cannes will welcome the jury for the Cinéfondation and short films, presided over this year by Jean-Pierre DARDENNE (Belgian director, scriptwriter and producer), who shared the honours of the Grand Prix with his brother Luc for The Kid with a Bike in 2011, after winning two Palmes d’Or, first in 1999 for Rosetta and then in 2005 for The Child, and the prize for best screenplay in 2008 for Lorna’s Silence.

The jury, composed of five well-known personalities from the world of cinema and literature, brings together Arsinée KHANJIAN (Canadian actress), Karim AÏNOUZ (Brazilian director and scriptwriter), Emmanuel CARRÈRE (French writer, scriptwriter and director) and YU Lik-wai (Chinese director of photography and filmmaker).

The Jury will select three films presented in the Sélection Cinéfondation, composed of works by cinema-schools, to which they will award prizes of €15,000, €11,250 and €7,500 respectively.
These awards will be presented on Friday 25th May in Cannes, at a ceremony in the Salle Buñuel, followed by a screening of the winning films.

The jury will also award the Palme d’Or for Short Films, to be presented at the Festival’s Closing Ceremony on Sunday 27 May.

The short-film competition, composed of previously unscreened works, has in the past discovered artists who have risen to fame: Jane CAMPION and Nuri Bilge CEYLAN, Xavier GIANNOLI, Lynne RAMSAY and Catalin MITULESCU all received their first recognition with a short film in competition in Cannes.

For its part, the Sélection de la Cinéfondation, created in 1998, has screened the student films of many directors whose talent was subsequently confirmed with a feature film, including Vimukthi JAYASUNDARA (Caméra d’Or 2005),  Corneliu PORUMBOIU (Caméra d’Or 2006), Kornél MUNDRUCZÓ (In Competition 2008 & 2010) and Jessica HAUSNER (Un Certain Regard 2001 & 2004).

source: Festival de Cannes