The American director, screenwriter and actress Greta Gerwig will be the president of the jury of the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which will be held from May 14 to 25, 2024, the organization reported today in a statement.
The festival highlighted that Gerwig, who this year "broke all records" with Barbie, is a "heroine of our times" who challenges the norms of "a codified film industry and an era that needs to be questioned," as well as a " movie lover."
Gerwig, who succeeds the Swedish director Ruben Östlund as head of the Cannes jury, thus becomes the first American filmmaker to perform this role and, at 40 years old, she is the second youngest figure to occupy this role after the actress Sofía Loren, who did it at the age of 31 in 1966.
"I deeply love movies. I love making them, I love going to see them, I love talking about them for hours," said the director of Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019) in the statement released by Cannes.
"As a cinephile, Cannes has always been for me the pinnacle of what the universal language of cinema can represent. Putting myself in a state of vulnerability, sitting in a dark room full of strangers to watch a new film, is what I love the most. I like it. I feel overwhelmed, excited and humbled to become president of the jury," she added.
In less than fifteen years, according to the prestigious event in the French city on the Mediterranean coast, Gerwig, originally from Sacramento (California, United States) and "a New Yorker by adoption", has left "her mark on American and international cinema ".
"The woman who dreamed of being a playwright has taken a unique path, as coherent as it is risky, which is a sign of a meteoric rise," the contest highlighted.
"Once the muse of American independent cinema, now at the top of the world box office," Cannes recalled, Gerwig "has achieved juxtapositions that were supposed to be irreconcilable" by directing "auteur blockbusters" that combine "art and industry," while questions "contemporary issues with finesse and complexity."
For Cannes, Gerwig "affirms her demanding artistic ambitions within an economic system in which she invests to make better use of it."
"Whether performed, written or directed, his artistic work addresses recurring themes such as family torment, the transition to adulthood, the fear of social decline and the birth of an artistic vocation, through free, sometimes fragile characters. and marginal, but determined," the statement also highlighted.
Gerwig will also be the second director in general to head the jury at Cannes, after the New Zealander Jane Campion, and the second woman of American nationality after Olivia de Haviland, who was the first woman to hold that title in 1965.
