Franco-American director Damien Chazelle will chair the Venice Film Festival jury

Franco-American director Damien Chazelle will chair the jury of the 80th Venice Film Festival, which will award the Golden Lion to one of the films in competition on the Lido from August 30 to September 9, the festival announced on Friday May 5. “For ten days each year, this city of art of Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese is transformed into a city of cinema, and I am flattered and honored to be invited to chair the jury this year”reacted the Oscar-winning director of La La Land in the press release.

Only 38 years old, Damien Chazelle, whose film babylon (2022) received three nominations for the last Oscars, already knows the Mostra since he opened it in 2016 with La La Land and in 2018 with first-man.

Alice Diop at the head of another jury

The jury for the best first work will also be chaired by a Frenchwoman: Alice Diop will award the Lion of the Future, which she herself won in 2022 with the bonus of the Grand Jury Prize for her first fiction feature film, Saint Omer. “It is a great honor and a joy”said Alice Diop, welcoming “a festival that welcomed me and gave me so much last year”. His film, also awarded the César for best first film and the Jean Vigo prize, was also France’s candidate for the Oscars.

It is the Italian Jonas Carpignano who will chair the jury of the parallel section Orizzonti (“Horizons”). He is notably the author of Mediterranean (2015), which was presented at Critics’ Week in Cannes, and At Ciambra (2017).

Last year, the jury chaired by actress Julianne Moore awarded the Golden Lion to director Laura Poitras, 58, for her film All the beauty and the bloodshed. This documentary tells the story of photographer Nan Goldin’s fight against the tragedy of opiates which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States. It was thus the third director to be crowned in a row, after the French Audrey Diwan in 2021 (The Event) and Chinese-American Chloé Zhao (nomadland) in 2020.