Fifty years after his compatriot Ingrid Bergman, the 48-year-old filmmaker, a regular on the Croisette, will have the task of choosing the next Palme d'Or with the other jurors.

He is the third doubly palmed director to become president of the jury, and the very first to take on this role the year following his coronation, with "Without filter", an enjoyable satire of the super-rich and luxury.

In his sixth film, the Swede engages in an uncompromising criticism of capitalism and its excesses, castigating the excesses of an ultra-consumerist society, where appearances prevail.

Raised by a communist mother, defining himself as a "socialist", this big talker did not give in to the ease of "describing the rich as bad guys" but rather to "understanding their behavior", he assured in a recent interview with AFP.

Through his work, which often leaves a feeling of unease, he increasingly dissects modern Western mores, seeking to remain faithful "to the intellectual aspect of the art of cinema which wants to trigger a discussion".

"Basically the theme is the same: the game of social relations", analyzes Swedish critic Björn Jansson for AFP.

In 2011, in "Play", where five black children rob three white children, Östlund tackled systemic racism and its representations.

He enjoyed international success with "Snow Therapy" (2014), which debunks the modern family with a father fleeing an avalanche, his mobile phone in his hand but leaving his wife and children in danger.

This tragicomedy, which won a Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes, also opened the doors to the American film industry.

However, it is with "Sans Filtre" that he signs his first film entirely in English, leaving "the position of the interesting director of a foreign language film".

Skiing and YouTube

Falsely modest, Östlund could well see himself winning a third Palme d'Or.

"I want to stay humble, but it's possible now to win a third Palme. No one has done it before. I don't want to be arrogant, but it's a possibility," he told Los Angeles. Times.

In 2017, he had the audience of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes scream with joy by winning the Palme d'Or for "The Square", where a director of a museum of contemporary art prepares an exhibition on tolerance but comes up against to its own limitations.

For Östlund, it is the situations more than the characters that make the film.

The Swedish press described him as "a kleptomaniac. He steals situations from his own life, those of his friends and, not least, from YouTube to make fiction out of them".

Swedish director Ruben Östlund poses with the Palme d'Or awarded for his film "Without Filter" during the Cannes Film Festival, May 28, 2022 in Cannes © PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP/Archives

For "Without filter", he confided that he was inspired by many anecdotes reported by his wife, a fashion photographer.

And it is to his German mother-in-law, aphasic after a stroke a few years ago, that we owe the phrase "In den Wolken", tirelessly repeated by one of the characters in the film, also paralyzed.

Born near Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city, in April 1974, Östlund studied directing there and still works there today.

Looking like a young first, he arrived in the cinema after making ski films, one of his passions, when he was seasonal in the Alps in the 90s. ".

The profusion of catches is one of its trademarks.

When he has the same take repeated forty times, he now apologizes in half-words.

A habit that comes to him from childhood, during which, by his own admission, he behaved like a "dictator imbued with a certain notion of justice".

© 2023 AFP