The love story between Xavier Dolan and the Cannes Film Festival continues: the Quebec filmmaker may “not want to make any more films,” but he will be happy to chair the jury for “Un Sure Regard” this year.
Published at 1:27 p.m. Updated at 2:20 p.m.
The naturalness of this choice was “obvious,” said the Cannes Festival. The person most affected said he was “overwhelmed by this honor.”
“Even more than filmmaking, discovering the talents of other filmmakers has always been important to my personal and professional career,” said Xavier Dolan in a press release issued Thursday. This mandate will be an opportunity, together with the members of the jury of “Un Certain Consideration”, to devote myself to something artistically essential: films and their search for truth. »
Xavier Dolan himself presented two films in Un certain consideration, the main section parallel to the official competition in Cannes, dedicated to auteur and discovery cinema: Les amours Imaginaires, 2010, then Laurence Anyways, 2012. Suzanne Clément won the Interpretation Prize ex aequo.
It was Dolan's fifth feature film – Mommy – that allowed him to enter the official competition in 2014, leaving him tied for the Jury Prize with Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langue. Xavier Dolan joined the jury the following year, chaired by the Coen brothers. In 2016, the Quebec filmmaker took another step forward by winning the Grand Prix with his film Juste la fin du monde. His eighth feature film Matthias et Maxime was also presented in competition in 2019.
“The obviousness of this choice was obvious: the cinema of “ambition to create,” write the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival.
American filmmaker Greta Gerwig will be president of the jury for this 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from May 14 to 25. The official selection will be announced on April 11th.
Remember that this summer, 34-year-old Xavier Dolan surprised the cinema world when he told the Spanish media that he was quitting filmmaking. In the days and months that followed, he confirmed his decision and said he felt at peace. “I didn’t expect this disgust, this tiredness. I have no bitterness, but I am detaching. I don’t feel like it anymore,” he said in an interview published in GQ France magazine in September.