‘Barbie’ director Greta Gerwig to head 77th Cannes Film Festival jury

The Cannes Film Festival announced Thursday
that Greta Gerwig, director of summer blockbuster “Barbie”, will preside over
the jury at its 77th edition in May.

The 40-year-old Gerwig, also an actor and screenwriter, takes the baton from
Sweden’s Ruben Ostlund, whose jury awarded the 2023 Palme d’Or to courtroom
drama “Anatomy of a Fall”.

She is the first American woman filmmaker to take on the role, the festival
said in a statement.

Gerwig’s presence will provide a youthful flair to Cannes, which has not had
such a young president since 1966, when it was led by then-31-year-old Sophia
Loren.

She is also the first woman since actor Cate Blanchett in 2018 to assume the
prestigious position, where men remain over-represented.

“I love films — I love making them, I love going to them, I love talking
about them,” Gerwig said in a statement.

“As a cinephile, Cannes has always been the pinnacle of what the universal
language of movies can be”.

Aside from “Barbie”, a vivid feminist satire about the all-conquering line of
plastic dolls, Gerwig has also directed “Lady Bird” (2017) and “Dr March’s
Daughters” (2020).

She is currently working on an adaptation of “The Chronicles of Narnia” for
Netflix.

The festival described Gerwig, who has starred in more than two dozen films,
as a heroine for modern times who has rattled the status quo.

“This is an obvious choice, since Greta Gerwig so audaciously embodies the
renewal of world cinema,” said Cannes boss Iris Knobloch and festival
delegate Thierry Fremaux

“Beyond the seventh art, she is also the representative of an era that is
breaking down barriers and mixing genres, and thereby elevating the values of
intelligence and humanism,” they added.

In announcing a high-profile woman director, the world’s largest film
festival stole back the spotlight from its younger competitor, February’s
Berlinale.

The festival in the German capital on Monday announced its own jury
president, 40-year-old Mexican-Kenyan actor Lupita Nyong’o, the first black
person named to the role.

In choosing Gerwig, Cannes is also highlighting its continued ties with the
powerful American film industry.

The Cannes Film Festival has yet to unveil the rest of the jury or the films
in the official selection. (BSS/AFP)