Greta Gerwig has been confirmed as the Jury President for the 2024 Cannes International Film Festival, days after getting her first best director nomination at the Golden Globes and 9 nominations for the movie.
“A heroine of our modern times, Greta Gerwig shakes up the status quo between a highly codified cinema industry and an era that is demanding greater scrutiny,” Cannes announced. With this, Gerwig will script history as the first American female director to be Cannes Jury President.
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Greta Gerwig Is An “Obvious Choice” For The Position
Cannes Festival President Iris Knobloch and Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux emphasized that Gerwig is “an obvious choice since she so audaciously embodies the renewal of world cinema, for which Cannes is each year both the forerunner and the sounding board.”
He said that Gerwig is not just an excellent filmmaker, but also “the representative of an era that is breaking down barriers and mixing genres, and thereby elevating the values of intelligence and humanism.”
Cannes also echoed the same sentiments. “Yesterday, ambassador of independent American cinema, today at the summit of worldwide box office success, Greta Gerwig manages to combine what was previously judged to be incompatible: Delivering arthouse blockbusters, narrowing the gap between art and industry, exploring contemporary feminist issues with deft as well as depth, and declaring her demanding artistic ambition from within an economic model that she embraces in order to put to better use,” the statement by Cannes said.
It further asserted that Gerwig’s artistic endeavors have recurrent leitmotifs “such as family upheaval, adolescent rites of passage, fear of loss of social status or the emergence of artistic vocation via characters that are free, sometimes fragile and marginal, but also fierce”. It highlighted that her endeavors regarding acting, writing, or directing, follow the same laudable approach.
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Gerwig Paving Way For Women And Feminist Art In Hollywood
Gerwig will be only the second female director to be appointed for the post. Before her, the female director who held the position was Jane Campion in 2014. American actress Olivia de Haviland was the Cannes’ first female Jury President, appointed in 1965.
Gerwig’s career has been versatile, with her taking on roles both on and off the screen. She has worked both as an actor and a screenwriter in films like ‘Hannah Takes the Stairs‘, ‘Frances Ha‘ and ‘Mistress America‘. Her direction debut came in 2017 with ‘Lady Bird‘.
The movie was a huge hit with 5 Oscar nominations, including one for Best Direction. The movie grossed about $80 million worldwide. Her next direction, 2019 period classic ‘Little Women‘ was also a hit with a stellar cast. It earned $218 million worldwide and marked Gerwig’s entry into the top tier of studio directors.
Her greatest achievement, ‘Barbie‘, broke all records for Gerwig and set her apart. Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, Barbie was the biggest hit of 2023. It earned more than $1.4 billion
The Cannes therefore has called the movie “an international cultural phenomenon…the most bankable female film director in history.” The 77th Cannes Film Festival is set to be held in May next year between May 14 to 25.
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