Actors Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga and Isaach De Bankolé along with Oscar-winning writer-director Chloé Zhao, Chilean writer-director Diego Céspedes, Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel and Ken Loach’s go-to screenwriter Paul Laverty have been selected for the main competition jury at the upcoming 79th Cannes Film Festival.
The group, revealed Monday, join writer-director Park Chan-Wook who was previously announced as the jury president. They will oversee the 22-film In Competition lineup at this year’s fest, which runs May 12-23 on the French riviera.
This year’s Competition slate (which is light on U.S. fare this edition) includes pics by Pedro Almodóvar, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Asghar Farhadi, James Gray, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Cristian Mungiu, Na Hong-jin, László Nemes, Marie Kreutzer, Pawel Pawlikowski, Léa Mysius and Ira Sachs.
The festival opens May 12 with the Out of Competition pic The Electric Kiss by Pierre Salvadori.
Moore returns to Cannes after her starring turn in 2024’s The Substance, one of the biggest titles to come out of the festival that year (Moore was a hit on the Croisette) that went on to earn an Oscar Best Picture nomination. Skarsgård starred in last year’s Cannes smash, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which also scored Oscar noms for him and the film after it won Cannes’ Grand Prix prize.
Zhao, coming off the Oscar-nominated Hamnet this year, won Best Picture and Directing Oscars for 2021’s Nomadland. Ruth Negga was Oscar-nominated for the 2016 competition title Loving, while Isaach De Bankolé is a Cannes regular with Claire Denis-directed pics like Chocolat and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog.
Wandel’s career includes directing three films at Cannes: in 2014 with Foreign Bodies; in 2021 with her first feature film Playground, which was shortlisted for the Oscar; and last year’s Adam’s Sake, developed at the festival’s La Résidence and which opened the Critics’ Week sidebar. Céspedes last year won the Un Certain Regard Prize for his debut feature The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, after his pics The Summer of the Electric Lion (2018) and The Melting Creatures (2022) previously played at the festival.
Laverty has written 14 films for Loach — 11 that played Cannes — including two that won the festival’s top prize the Palme d’Or: 2006’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley and 2016’s I, Daniel Blake. He won the screenplay prize in 2002 for Loach’s Sweet Sixteen.
