The full competition jury for this year’s Cannes film festival has been announced, with A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay and the actor Kristen Stewart among those joining the previously announced jury president, Cate Blanchett.
In the festival’s first female-majority jury since 2014, the trio are joined by the French actor Léa Seydoux and the Burundian musician Khadja Nin. Rounding out the jury list are the Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve, the veteran French film-maker Robert Guédiguian, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev and Chang Chen, the Chinese actor best known for his collaborations with film-maker Wong Kar-Wai.
The announcement comes in the wake of criticism over the lack of female directors in official competition at this year’s festival. Only three of 17 films up for the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, have been made by women, although the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, which showcases films with unusual themes or techniques, features a majority of female directors.
“For the last four years, I’ve become much more concerned about the presence of women at the festival,” the festival’s director, Thierry Frémaux told Variety last week. “I’ve been having discussions with intelligent women like Jessica Chastain and have listened to their advice about ways to improve certain things. We’ve started paying more attention to the gender ratio on our selection committees, for instance. Right now, two out of the three committees have as many women as men.”
Chastain, a jury member at Cannes 2017, described the portrayal of women in the films at that year’s festival as “disturbing”.
Heading up the Un Certain Regard section jury is the actor Benicio del Toro, while the director Ursula Meier will preside over the Caméra d’Or award for the best first feature at the festival. Joacuim Trier and Chloë Sevigny will be among the jurists for the International Critics’ Week competition, devoted to film-makers’ first or second features.
The Cannes film festival opens on 8 May, with a lineup that includes new films by Spike Lee, Pawel Pawlikowski and Jean-Luc Godard. The new film by controversial Danish director Lars von Trier is expected to be added to the lineup in the coming days.
