The filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona will participate in the competition jury of the next edition of the Cannes festival, which will be held from May 14 to 25. He will not be the only Spanish director judging films in the French competition, since a few weeks it was made public that Rodrigo Sorogoyen will preside over the jury of Critics’ Week, which takes place almost at the same time as the competition, from May 15 to 23 .
Months ago, the contest had already announced the name of the president of the team that will elucidate the competition’s record, an honor that this year has fallen to the actress, screenwriter and director Greta Gerwig (Barbie, Lady Bird). Now the name of the members of the jury has been revealed in which, together with Bayona, who has just won six Platinum awards for Latin American audiovisuals with his latest film, The Snow Society, there will be the Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda – a regular at La Croisette -, the American actress Lily Gladstone – this year’s Oscar candidate for The Moon Killers—the Italian actor Pierfrancisco Favino, the French actors Eva Green and Omar Sy, the Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki —jury prize at the 2018 Cannes with Capernaum― and the Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, co-writer with her husband, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, of the 2014 Palme d’Or Winter Sleep.
They will announce their decision at the closing gala of the 77th edition of the contest, which will take place on Saturday, May 25. The latest films by prestigious filmmakers such as Andrea Arnold, Francis Ford Coppola, Paolo Sorrentino, Paul Schrader, David Cronenberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jacques Audiard, Ali Abbasi and Karim Aïnouz are up for the Palme d’Or.
Bayona is a Cannes regular. His feature film debut, The orphanage, premiered at Critics’ Week in 2007, and although the rest of his films have not been released since the French festival, the Barcelona director is usually seen year after year, at film showings and in the film market that is developing at the same time as the contest.
For its part, in France the name of Rodrigo Sorogoyen has a lot of weight among critics and the public. His last feature film, The beasts, It premiered at the French festival in the Cannes Première section in 2022, and even came out earlier in theaters than in Spain. Furthermore, it won the César, the Oscar of French cinema, for the best foreign film, competing against, for example, the Palme d’Or. The triangle of sadness by Ruben Östlund. Finished recording his new series, The new years, for Movistar+, Sorogoyen, as president of the Critics’ Week jury, will be the star of this section.
After a couple of editions with a large and brilliant Spanish presence, this year in Cannes the dry season has arrived. And not only Spanish, but there are almost no Latin American titles in the different sections of the contest (in the competition there will only be Destino Motel, by the Brazilian Karim Aïnouz). Jonás Trueba will present You will return in the Filmmakers’ Fortnight, starring Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz. Written by Trueba himself and the two main actors, the comedy, which was filmed last fall in Madrid, tells how, after 15 years together, Ale and Alex organize a party to celebrate their breakup. In addition, Elena López Riera will premiere her medium-length film at her Critics’ Week The brides of the south. It is the third time that López Riera’s films have been screened at the French competition, after his short film was presented there. Pueblo in 2015, and released his first feature film, Water, in the Filmmakers’ Fortnight in 2022. Finally, the restored copy of Tasius, by Montxo Armendáriz, a work carried out by the Basque Film Library on the 40th anniversary of the film’s release.