Rome (AFP)
Australian star Cate Blanchett will chair the jury of the next Venice Film Festival, the international film festival whose 77th edition will be held from September 2 to 12, the organizers announced on Thursday.
The decision to appoint the actress and producer Cate Blanchett, 50, to the jury was taken on January 10 by the Board of Directors of the Venice Biennale, of which the Mostra is an entity, explain the organizers in a communicated.
"Each year I wait for the selection of Venice, and each year it is surprising and remarkable," said Cate Blanchett in the press release. "Venice is one of the most attractive film festivals in the world, a celebration of the provocative and stimulating medium of cinema in all its forms".
For Alberto Barbera, artistic director of the Mostra "it will be a great pleasure" to find Cate Blanchett in Venice as president of the jury "after having applauded her as the magnificent interpreter of" Elizabeth: the Golden Age "of the Indian Shekhar Kapur and "I'm Not There" by the American Todd Haynes, a film in which she metamorphoses Bob Dylan into an androgynous dandy. This role had won him the Volpi Cup, prize for interpretation at the Mostra in 2007 .
At the forefront of the fight of women against sexual violence in the cinema, especially since the Weinstein scandal, Cate Blanchett had brought the challenge to the Cannes festival in 2018, the year when she also chaired the jury. That year, she had climbed the famous Cannes steps among 82 women of the 7th Art in favor of equality.
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