The Cannes Film Festival 2014 has chosen three filmmakers from Asia for this year’s nine-member jury, underscoring the continuing importance of the region in world cinema.
The three Asians are – Chinese director Jia Zhangke, an often provocative filmmaker whose films explore the lives of ordinary people in a changing society, Jeon Do-yeon, one of South Korea’s most prominent actresses, also was named to the jury. Jeon Do-yeon won the best-actress award at Cannes in 2007 for Secret Sunshine.
Her most recent film is Way Back Home, in which she plays an unwitting drug courier and last but not the least Iranian actress Leila Hatami, whose film A Separation from director Asghar Farhadi won multiple international awards two years ago, rounds out the jury members from Asia.
Joining them would be New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion along with industry colleagues from Mexico, China, South Korea, France and Iran on the jury for next month’s Cannes Film Festival. Jane Campion, who won the 1986 Palme D’Or for her short film Peel and the 1993 prize for her feature The Piano, will serve as jury president.
The nine-member panel will decide the division of the major spoils, including the recipient of the crowning Palme D’Or Award.
The others jury members are Mexican actor and film-maker Gael Garcia Bernal, France’s Carole Bouquet and the Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe. This year the Cannes jury also includes three writer-directors; Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn, China’s Jia Zhangke and Sofia Coppola from US.
Among the contenders for the top prize at this year’s event are new films from Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Michel Hazanavicius, David Cronenberg and Jean-Luc Godard.
Also the former focus International high flier Alison Thompson will launch her new sales and production banner Sunray Films with a big-screen adaptation of Hans Fallada‘s Alone In Berlin during The 67th Cannes Film Festival. The novel, which sold close to four lakh copies worldwide, has been billed as the greatest book about German resistance to the Nazis ever.
The 67th Cannes Film Festival opens on May 14, 2014 with Grace Of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman as Princess Grace Of Monaco and runs until May 25, 2014.
