Legendary French actress Isabelle Huppert will head up the 2024 Venice Film Festival jury this year.
Serving as jury president of the 81st edition, Huppert will hand out the Golden Lion and other awards when the festival on the Lido concludes.
In a statement, Huppert said: “There is a long and beautiful history between the Festival and I. Becoming a privileged spectator is an honor. More than ever, cinema is a promise. The promise to escape, to disrupt, to surprise, to take a good look at the world, united in the differences of our tastes and ideas.”
Huppert was previously jury president at Cannes in 2009, awarding the Palme d’Or to Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, and won Venice’s Volpi Cup for Best Actress twice - for 1988’s Story of Women and 1995’s La Ceremonie. The festival also awarded her a Special Lion for her overall work in 2005. She also was appointed as the recipient of the Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2022.
The 71-year-old actress is one of France’s most celebrated performers, has appeared in many Hollywood productions, and tallies more than 150 roles, which include Elle by Paul Verhoeven, for which she garnered an Oscar nomination and also won a Golden Globe.
“Isabelle Huppert is an immense actress, demanding, curious and of great generosity,” stated Alberto Barbera, the Director of the Venice Film Festival. “The muse of numerous great filmmakers, she has never shirked the invitation of young or not-so-famous directors who have seen in her the ideal interpreter of their stories.”
Barbera added: “Her enormous willingness to constantly put herself on the line, a sign of her uncommon intelligence, together with her ability to look at cinema beyond geographic and mental boundaries, make her an ideal President of the Jury in a festival open to the entire world such as the Venice Film Festival. We are very grateful to her for accepting the position, aware of the many commitments in film and theater that she will face in the coming months.”
The 81st Venice International Film Festival takes place from 28 August to 7 September. The names of other members of the jury will be announced in the coming weeks.
