Filmstars Jake Gyllenhaal, Sienna Miller and Sophie Marceau, as well as cult director Guillermo del Toro are among the members of this year’s Cannes film festival jury, organisers announced Tuesday.
Other members of the jury for the May festival, which is being presided over by the Coen brothers, are Canadian director Xavier Dolan, Spanish actress Rossy de Palma and Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traore.
The jury will choose the winners in a range of acting and film-making categories, including the top prize, the Palme D’Or, presented at the closing ceremony on May 24.
Dolan is by far the youngest member of the jury at just 26. His debut film “I Killed My Mother” appeared at Cannes when he was only 20, and his second feature “Mommy” won the third-place Jury Prize last year.
The paparazzi will be particularly excited by the presence of Miller, who spent years being hounded by tabloids before finally getting a chance to prove her acting skills in recent hits “Foxcatcher” and “American Sniper”.
The jury will be picking from a crop of entries that include American film “The Sea of Trees” starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts.
Also in the running is “Sicario” starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, about a CIA operation to bring down a Mexican cartel.
That entry may pose a quandary for Gyllenhaal, who is close to “Sicario” director Denis Villeneuve after appearing in his last two features.
Cate Blanchett heads up another entrant, “Carol”, a lesbian love story set in New York, while Rachel Weisz will be in two movies: the Italian-directed “Youth” also featuring Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, and Greece’s “The Lobster” with Colin Farrel.
Other movies chosen included several Asian picks — “The Assassin” from Taiwan, “Umimachi Diary” from Japan, “Mountains May Depart” from China, and an Australian version of “Macbeth” starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
Also on the jury is Rossy de Palma, an acting muse for Spanish directing legend Pedro Almodovar, while French actress Marceau has mixed popular favourites with arthouse classics, and is probably best-known outside France for her roles in Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” and the James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough”.
The Cannes Film Festival will run from May 13 to 24.