After a stellar track record at the Cannes Film Festival, the Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia has now become a part of the jury at the festival.
The Cannes Film Festival has put together a powerful jury for its 78th edition, including Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong and Payal Kapadia.
Payal Kapadia’s film All We Imagine As Light won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2024. Her journey with Cannes started much earlier.
She was at the festival to present her short film Afternoon Clouds at the Cannes La Cinefondation in 2017. This was followed by her nonfiction film A Night of Knowing Nothing, which won the L’Œil d’Or award for best documentary in 2021.
Her achievement last year was huge. All We Imagine As Light, best described as an ode to female friendship, love, and longing in Mumbai, became the first film from India to be part of the Cannes Competition after a 30-year gap.
French actor Juliette Binoche will preside over the jury, succeeding Greta Gerwig who handed out the Palme d’Or to Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’.
Other jury members of the festival’s upcoming 78th edition will include American actor and filmmaker Halle Berry, Italian actor Alba Rohrwacher, French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani, Congolese director-producer Dieudo Hamadi, Korean director and screenwriter Hong Sangsoo, Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas and American actor Jeremy Strong.
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The panel will award its top prize, the Palme d’Or, to one of the 21 films in Competition.
In the past, Indian film personalities such as Mrinal Sen, Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Nandita Das, Sharmila Tagore, Vidya Balan, and Deepika Padukone have served on the Cannes jury.