Two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett has been named as the Jury President of the Cannes Film Festival 2018.
The Festival, which takes place this year from May 8th-19th in Canes, France, typically names a world famous name to lead it’s jury, a jury whose role it is to pick the outstanding films shown at the festival and deem them worthy of an award. Blanchett, who follows in the footsteps of last years Jury President Pedro Almodovar, is no stranger to Cannes. She’s attended many many times as the star of several films which have been shown at the festival.
In her film roles, Blanchett has worked with the best of the best, great directors, switching from independent ventures to lavish productions, and has appeared in notable contemporary English-language cinema: The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson, Benjamin Button by David Fincher, Babel by Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Life Aquatic by Wes Anderson, The Good German by Steven Soderbergh, Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch. Blanchett has worked with Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, Sally Potter, Ridley Scott, Woody Allen and Todd Haynes.
In 2012, Blanchett was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister for Culture and also the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society, both for her significant contribution to the arts. In 2015, she was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts before she was made a Companion in the Order of Australia in 2017.
Blanchett won one of her two Oscars in 2014 for Best Actress for her performance in Blue Jasmine by Woody Allen. In 2004 she won for Best Supporting Actress in The Aviator by Martin Scorsese in which she played an unforgettable Katharine Hepburn – it is the first time that an actress has won an Oscar for playing another actress… who also won an Oscar. Blanchett has also been nominated for her performance in Carol by Todd Haynes, a film that she co-produced and which was presented in Competition at Cannes in 2015. In 2008 she received two Oscar nominations, Best Actress for Elizabeth the Golden Age by Shekhar Kapur (with whom she collaborated 10 years earlier in Elizabeth) and Best Supporting Actress for I’m Not There by Todd Haynes (for which she won the Best Actress prize at the Mostra in Venice), making her one of only five actors in the history of the Academy to have been nominated for both categories in the same year.
The full lineup of the film festival and the rest of the jury members will be announced soon.
For more information on the festival, please go to:
http://www.festival-cannes.com/fr/