The Cannes Film Festival announced its jury members for the 78th edition. Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, who scripted history by winning the Grand Prix for her debut feature, All We Imagine As Light at last year's Cannes, will serve as a jury member at Cannes 2025.
Actress and filmmaker Halle Berry, actor Jeremy Strong, Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, South Korean filmmaker Hong Sansoo, Congolese director-documentarist and producer Dieudo Hamadi, French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani, Mexican filmmaker and producer Carlos Reygados are also part of the Cannes jury.
Payal Kapadia's association with Cannes
Payal Kapadia, a Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) alumni, went to Cannes in 2017 to present her short film Afternoon Clouds at the festival's La Cinefondation, and in 2021, her non-fiction film A Night of Knowing Nothing, was premiered in the Directors' Fortnight stream of the festival, where it won the L'Œil d'or award for best documentary.
For the unversed, earlier, Indian film personalities such as Shekhar Kapur, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Nandita Das, Mrinal Sen, Mira Nair, Sharmila Tagore, Vidya Balan, and Deepika Padukone were part of the Cannes jury.
This year, French actor Juliette Binoche will serve as the jury president, which marks a second time in Cannes history that the jury will be headed by a woman for two consecutive years. The last jury president was Barbie director, Greta Gerwig.
21 films are competing this year at Cannes. The jury will decide on the winner of the prestigious Palme d'Or from these films. The winners of Cannes 2025 will be announced on May 24 during the closing ceremony.
Actor-producer Robert De Niro, will be conferred with the Honorary Palme d'Or at the opening ceremony which is on May 13. Next day, Niro will attend a special masterclass on the stage of the Debussy Theater, where he is said to talk about his career spanning more than five decades.
The festival will take place from May 13 to 24, 2025, at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France.
