The Canadian actor, director, screenwriter and producer Xavier Dolan will be the President of the Un Certain Regard Jury of the 77th Festival de Cannes. He will be joined by French-Senegalese screenwriter and director Maïmouna Doucouré, Moroccan director, screenwriter and producer Asmae El Moudir, German-Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps, and American film critic, director, and writer Todd McCarthy. They will be in charge of awarding prizes for the Un Certain Regard section, which showcases art and discovery films by young auteurs. This year, 18 films have been selected, including 8 first films. The 2023 Un Certain Regard top prize went to director Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature How to Have Sex. When the Light Breaks by Rúnar Rúnarsson will open the Un Certain Regard section on Wednesday May 15, 2024.
XAVIER DOLAN – President
Actor, director, screenwriter, producer
Canada
An actor since the age of four, Xavier Dolan directed and starred in his first feature film, I Killed my Mother, which was a big hit at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2009. This was followed by Heartbeats and Laurence Anyways, presented at the Festival de Cannes in 2010 and 2012 at Un Certain Regard, where they were enthusiastically received. In 2013, Tom at the Farm was screened at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. With Mommy, he is awarded several prizes, including the Jury Prize at the 2014 Festival de Cannes and the César for Best Foreign Film. Grand Prize winner at the 2016 Festival de Cannes with It’s Only the End of the World, he returns to Competition with Matthias & Maxime in 2019. After a few notable roles with other filmmakers, such as his performance in Xavier Giannoli’s Lost Illusions in 2021, for which he was nominated for a César for Best Supporting Actor, in 2022 he directed the series The Night Logan woke up. Xavier Dolan was a member of the Jury in 2015, and now chairs the Un Certain Regard Jury.
MAÏMOUNA DOUCOURÉ
Screenwriter, director
France, Senegal
Her first professional short film, Maman(s), was selected for nearly 200 festivals around the world and won more than 60 awards, including the Jury Prize at Sundance, the Best Film Award in Toronto and the 2017 César for Best Short Film. In 2019, Maïmouna Doucouré receives the Gold Fellowship Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures. Released in 2020, Cuties, her first feature film, wins the Best Director Award at Sundance and a Special Mention from the International Generation Jury in Berlin. The film’s lead actress, Fathia Youssouf, won the César for Best Actress. Her second feature-length film, Hawa, produced in 2022 with Prime Vidéo, was also presented in Toronto. Maïmouna Doucouré is currently working on her next feature film about the legendary Joséphine Baker.
ASMAE EL MOUDIR
Director, screenwriter, producer
Morocco
Asmae El Moudir studied cinema at the Moroccan University and at La Fémis in Paris. She has directed several award winning short films. She completed her Al Jazeera television documentary, The Postcard, in 2020. The Mother of all Lies is her first independent documentary feature premiered at the 2023 Festival de Cannes where it won the Un Certain Regard Directing Prize. The film also won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary. The film is screened at Toronto, Sundance, Melbourne, Busan, Karlovy Vary as well as many festivals around the world and won more than 25 awards. Asmae El Moudir is nominated for the PGA Award and the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Doc. Most recently, she won the IDA Award (International Documentary Association) for Best Director. The Mother of All Lies was also shortlisted in the international features section of the Oscars 2024.
VICKY KRIEPS
Actress
Luxembourg, Germany
An international actress who works in French, English and German, Vicky Krieps has appeared in Joe Wright’s Hannah (2011), Philippe Claudel’s Before the Winter Chill (2013), Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man (2014), Ingo Haeb’s The Chambermaid Lynn (2015), Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx (2017), and starred alongside Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (2017). In 2021, she defended two films selected for the Festival de Cannes, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island in Competition and Mathieu Amalric’s Hold me Tight. The following year, she returned with two young German and Austrian directors in the Un Certain Regard section: Emily Atef’s More Than Ever and Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, which won her the Un Certain Regard Jury’s Best Actress Award in 2022. She will soon be seen in Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt and Hot Milk by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
TODD MCCARTHY
Film critic, director, writer
United States
Todd McCarthy is a Cannes veteran – his first was in 1970 – who for decades covered the Festival for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Among his books are the definitive biography “Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood”, “Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System” and “Fast Women” about female race car drivers. He won an Emmy Award for his documentary Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of a Hollywood Genius and is currently working on a project set in Hollywood just after World War II.
The 77th Festival de Cannes will take place from Tuesday May 14 to Saturday May 25, 2024.