A report by Variety indicates that this will include five men and four women from seven nationalities and five continents. They are filmmakers Ava DuVernay (American) and Denis Villeneuve (French) and actors Kristen Stewart (American) and Léa Seydoux (French). Others are Chinese actor Chang Chen, French director Robert Guédiguian, Burundian singer Khadja Nin and Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev.
While some have criticized the relatively low number of women directors in official competition, Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux told Variety last week that he has been conscious of the gender makeup of the jury.
“For the last four years, I’ve become much more concerned about the presence of women at the festival. I’ve been having discussions with intelligent women like Jessica Chastain and have listened to their advice about ways to improve certain things. We’ve started paying more attention to the gender ratio on our selection committees, for instance. Right now, two out of the three committees have as many women as men.”
