Juliette Binoche
President of the Jury of the 78th
Cannes Film Festival
The burst of laughter that sweeps everything away, the ideal of a commitment to her art and her time: Juliette Binoche has won over audiences and critics by bringing together the greatest filmmakers of today in a world filmography. Exactly 40 years after her first appearance on La Croisette, she will chair the Jury of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, which will award the Palme d’Or on Saturday, May 24.
Juliette Binoche will succeed American director Greta Gerwig. Thus, for the second time in the history of the Festival, two female artists will pass on this prestigious torch.
Juliette Binoche © Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe
“I look forward to sharing these moments of life with the members of the Jury and the public. In 1985, I climbed the Steps for the first time with the enthusiasm and uncertainty of a young actress; I never imagined returning 40 years later in this honorary role as President of the Jury. I weigh the privilege, the responsibility and the absolute necessity of humility.”
JULIETTE BINOCHE, PRESIDENT OF THE 2025 FEATURE FILM JURY
At each edition, the Cannes Film Festival brings together and explores: nationalities, cinematographies, sensibilities, genres, subjects… This is precisely what Juliette Binoche chose to do very early in a career marked by some 70 films and 40 years of artistic curiosity since her first major role in Rendez-vous by André Téchiné, presented on La Croisette in 1985. “I was born at the Cannes Film Festival,” she often declares.
Four decades have transformed her into an international star, initiating unexpected collaborations and scripts that are close to her heart. This instinctive path to the heart of global creation quickly gives her an essential aura among filmmakers from a constellation without borders: Michael Haneke (Austria), David Cronenberg or Abel Ferrara (United States), Olivier Assayas, Leos Carax or Claire Denis (France), Amos Gitaï (Israel), Naomi Kawase or Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Poland), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan)…
Copie conforme. photo (c) Laurent Thurin Nal
No other film can better express this insatiable appetite than Abbas Kiarostami's Copie conforme, which won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes in 2010: directed by an Iranian director in the heart of the Tuscan countryside, opposite a British opera singer, Juliette Binoche illuminates this universal story mixing love and art and their pretenses to better understand their truth. After this fifth film by the actress presented in the Official Selection, four will follow until La Passion de Dodin Bouffant by Trần Anh Hùng in 2023.
LA PASSION DE DODIN BOUFFANT -(c) DR.
LA PASSION DE DODIN BOUFFANT - (c) 2023 curiosa films. Gaumont. France 2 Cinema. Carole Bethuel
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TRAN ANH Hùng. LA PASSION DE DODIN BOUFFANT - (c) 2023 curiosa films
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Crowned with the most prestigious awards (Oscar, Bafta, César, Best Actress awards in Berlin and Venice, etc.), Juliette Binoche does not seek virtuosity, preferring to trust only in emotion and the truth of the moment that escapes her. No doubt encouraged, as Louis Malle points out after Fatale, by "the love story between her and the camera, a stupefying presence and intensity." The great gap between her performances in Bruno Dumont alone – from the purest (Camille Claudel 1915) to the burlesque (Ma Loute) – illustrates this taste for freedom and this courage to constantly put herself back into play. This is undoubtedly why she is so multiple and unpredictable in her art – her arts one should say, as she escapes from the cinema screens for series (The Staircase, The New Look), theatre (Ivo van Hove), dance (co-creation with Akram Khan), music (Alexandre Tharaud) or painting.
Maloute. photos du film. (c) R. Arpajou (c) 3B
The echoes of the world resonate through the voice of this committed citizen. Education, undocumented immigrants, human rights in Iran – we remember her protest in Cannes against the imprisonment of Jafar Panahi whose name she brandished on stage –, the brand new President of the European Film Academy is also in the essential wake of the speeches around the #MeToo movement: she thus delivers with generosity and responsibility the weakening experiences of her beginnings. She also uses her influence to regularly alert consciences to the ecological dangers that threaten our planet.
Her large-scale commitments recall those of Olivia de Havilland, remembered for having shaken up the all-powerful American studios. This Hollywood legend had been President of the Jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 1965, leaving the place for the first time to another woman, also a legend of the 7th Art from Cinecittà, Sophia Loren. It was 60 years ago. Like a distant but beautiful lineage, the presence of Juliette Binoche celebrates and brings the stars closer together through time.
ROYAL ARTS VISIONS; Juliette Binoche, President of the Jury of the 78th Cannes Film Festival