Greta Gerwig is president of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival jury – The Hollywood Reporter

Greta Gerwig

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Greta Gerwig hits the Croisette.

the Barbie Helmer, who recently received her first-ever nomination for best director at the Golden Globes (Gerwig’s $1.4 billion game-to-screen smash received 9 Golden Globe nominations), has been confirmed as president of the Cannes jury International Film Festival of 2024.

“A heroine of our modern era, Greta Gerwig is shaking up the status quo between a highly regulated film industry and an era that demands greater scrutiny,” the Cannes Film Festival said in its announcement.

Yesterday an ambassador for American independent cinema, today at the pinnacle of worldwide box office success, Greta Gerwig manages to combine what was previously judged incompatible: delivering blockbuster art films, bridging the gap between art and industry, and skillfully exploring contemporary feminist issues. As well as the depth and declaration of its artistic ambition, which is required from within an economic model that it adopts in order to put it to better use.

“Whether acting, writing or directing, her artistic endeavors have recurring leitmotifs, such as family turmoil, the rituals of adolescence, the fear of losing social status or the emergence of an artistic career through characters that are free, sometimes fragile and marginal, but also ferocious.”

Gerwig will be the first American director to serve as president of the Cannes Film Festival jury. She is the second director to hold this position, after Jane Campion in 2014, and the second American woman to hold this position, after actress Olivia de Havilland, who was the first president of the Cannes Film Festival jury in 1965.

“This is an obvious choice because Greta Gerwig boldly embodies the renewal of world cinema, for which Cannes every year is a pioneer and guide,” said Iris Knobloch, President of the Cannes Film Festival and Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux. Besides her talent as a filmmaker, Gerwig “is also a representative of an era that breaks barriers and blends genres, thus elevating the values ​​of intelligence and humanity,” they said.

Despite the praise, this will be Gerwig’s first time walking the red carpet at Cannes in an official capacity. None of her films as a director have been screened at the French festival.

“I love movies — I love making them, I love going to them, and I love talking about them,” Gerwig said in a statement. “As a cinephile, Cannes has always been the pinnacle of what the universal language of film can be. To be in a place of vulnerability, in a dark theater full of strangers, watching a new film is my favorite place to be. I am amazed, excited and humbled to be president of the festival’s jury.” Cannes Film Festival. I can’t wait to see what trips she has in store for all of us!

Gerwig’s career has taken her in front of and behind the camera, from her beginnings as an actress and screenwriter — along with starring, she co-wrote Hannah takes the stairs (2007) with Joe Swanberg, W Frances Ha (2012) and Mistress America (2015) with her partner Noah Baumbach – before making her first directorial effort in Breakout Hit Lady Bird In 2017.

Nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Director, Lady Bird It grossed nearly $80 million worldwide. Gerwig has arrived.

Its 2019 follow-up, a new look at the classic period little Women For Sony, it was a huge success, grossing $218 million worldwide and putting Gerwig in the upper echelon of studio executives.

But no one was prepared for this huge success Barbie. The pink-themed film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has been the biggest hit of 2023, grossing more than $1.4 billion, and so far owning the awards season. She is, as the Cannes Film Festival said in its announcement, “an international cultural phenomenon… the most bankable female filmmaker in history.”

The 77th session of the Cannes Film Festival will be held from May 14 to 25, 2024.