Venezia 72 Juries headed by Alfonso Cuarón

The selection is complete for the members of all three international Juries (Venezia 72, Orizzonti, “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for Best Debut Film) at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival (2-12 September 2015), directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by the Biennale di Veneziachaired by Paolo Baratta.

Venezia 72

The distinguished members of the Jury for the Venezia 72 Competition, in addition to the president, director Alfonso Cuarón, are:

· French author, screenwriter and director Emmanuel Carrère, author of several famous novels, including the bestsellers Limonov (2011) and Le Royaume (2015)

· Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for Kis uykusu (Winter Sleep)

· Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, author of Ida, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015

· Italian director Francesco Munzi, in competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival in 2014 with Anime nere, acclaimed by critics and winner of nine David di Donatello awards in 2015

· Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 1989 for A City of Sadness, and in competition at Cannes 2015 with The Assassin, which won the award for Best Director

· German actress Diane Kruger, who among her many international roles, played the character of Bridget von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds(2009) by Quentin Tarantino

· British director and screenwriter Lynne Ramsay, acclaimed by critics and nominated at the Golden Globe and Bafta awards for her film We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011)

· American actress and director Elizabeth Banks, star of the Spiderman and Hunger Games sagas, who made her directorial debut with the hit comedyPitch Perfect 2

The Jury of Venezia 72 will award the following official prizes to the feature films in Competition:

Golden Lion for Best Film, Silver Lion for Best Director, Grand Jury Prize, Coppa Volpi for Best Actor, Coppa Volpi for Best Actress, “Marcello Mastroianni” Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress, Award for Best Screenplay, and Special Jury Prize.

 

Biographical notes Venezia 72 (Competition)

· Alfonso Cuarón (President), Mexican director winner of an Oscar for Gravity. He has often participated in the Venice Film Festival, where in 2001 he presented Y tu mama también, a film that won the Osella for Best Screenplay and the Marcello Mastroianni award for Best Actor and Best Actress. He was in competition again in 2006 with Children of Men, winning the Osella for Best Cinematography. The film won three Oscar nominations. His last film,Gravity (2013), had its world premiere preview screening as the opening film of the 70th Venice International Film Festival, and won seven Oscars.

· Emmanuel Carrère, French author, screenwriter and director. He was also a film critic for the magazine Positif and in 1982 wrote an essay on Werner Herzog. His first novel was L’Amie du jaguar (1983). It was followed by eleven books which have won important prizes; some of them have been adapted to the screen, such as La Classe de neige (Class Trip, 1998), directed by Claude Miller,  L’Adversaire (The Adversary, 2002) by Nicole Garcia and La Moustache (2005) directed by Carrère himself. In 2003 he directed the documentary Retour à Kotelnitch, presented at the Venice Film Festival in the Nuovi Territori section.

· Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkish director. His first two feature-length films, Kasaba (The Town, 1997) and Mayis Sikintisi (Clouds of May, 1999), were presented at the Berlin Film Festival. With Uzak (Distant, 2003), Iklimler (Climates, 2006), Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys, 2008) and Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, 2011), all screened at the Cannes Film Festival, he won two Grand Prix, an award for Best Director, one for Best Actor, and the Critics’ Award. On the Croisette, he earned definitive recognition with the Palme d’Or in 2014 for Kis uykusu (Winter Sleep).

· Pawel Pawlikowski, Polish director and winner of an Oscar for Ida. He moved at an early age to England, where he made his debut in cinema with several acclaimed documentaries. His first fiction feature film, Last Resort, was presented at the Venice International Film Festival in 2000 and won a Bafta as Best Debut Film, and soon afterwards My Summer of Love (2004) won the prize for Outstanding British Film of the Year at the Bafta awards. His most recent film Ida (2013), acclaimed by international critics, won the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, along with many other awards in festivals around the world.

· Francesco Munzi, Italian director, the big winner at the 2015 David di Donatello awards for Anime nere. He made his debut as a director in 2004 with the feature-length film Saimir presented at the Venice International Film Festival in the Orizzonti section, where it won the Special Mention for the “Luigi De Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film. In 2008 he made Il resto della notte, presented in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs section of the Cannes Film Festival. In 2014 he directed Anime nere, presented in competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival, where it was highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. The film triumphed at the David di Donatello awards in 2015, winning nine statuettes, including Best Film and Best Director.

· Hou Hsaio-hsien, director and winner of the Golden Lion in Venice in 1989 for his film A City of Sadness. The film that brought him international fame was The Boys from Feng-kuei (1983), which preceded three strongly autobiographical films: A Summer at Grandpa’s (1984), A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985) and Dust in the Wind (1986). After winning the Golden Lion, Hou returned to Venice in 2004 with the film Café Lumière, a work that is also a tribute to the cinema of Ozu. He again earned critical acclaim for The Assassin (2015), presented in competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Prix de la mise-en-scène.

· Diane Kruger is a German actress, who played the cult character Bridget von Hammersmark in Inglourious Basterds (2009) by Quentin Tarantino. She rose to international fame in her role as Helen in Troy (2004) by Wolfgang Petersen, subsequently acting for auteurs such as Bille August, Benoît Jacquot and Andrew Niccol. She appeared at the Venice Film Festival in 2009 in Mr. Nobody, which was presented in competition and won the Osella prize for Best Screenplay. She also acted in the film Inhale (2010) by Baltasar Kormákur.

· Lynne Ramsay is a director and screenwriter from Great Britain, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as one of the brightest British directors of her generation. She has twice won the Prix du Jury in the short-film section of the Cannes Film Festival, first with her debut short Small Deaths (1996) and later with Gasman (1998). She has written and directed three feature films: Ratcatcher (1999), Morvern Callar (2002) and We Need to Talk About Kevin(2011), all presented at the Cannes Film Festival, where she also served as a member of the competition jury in 2013. We Need to Talk About Kevin won her a nomination at the Golden Globe and Bafta awards, and has won many international prizes as well.

· Elizabeth Banks is an American actress and director. She appeared in the Spiderman trilogy and has worked with directors such as Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith. She won three nominations at the Emmy awards for the acclaimed television series 30 Rock and Modern Family. She is in the main cast of the Hunger Games saga, and recently was the voice talent for the co-star of The Lego Movie (2014). She made her debut as a director of feature-length films with the hit comedy Pitch Perfect 2 in 2015.