Greta Gerwig Announced as Jury President for Cannes 2024

Greta Gerwig is set to become the first female American director to be appointed as Jury President at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

This comes after the director became the first female director to make a film that earned more than one billion dollars at the worldwide box office.

According to Cannes Festival President Iris Knobloch and Delegate General Thierry Frémaux, “This is an obvious choice, since Greta Gerwig so audaciously embodies the renewal of world cinema, for which Cannes is each year both the forerunner and the sounding board. Beyond the 7th Art, she is also the representative of an era that is breaking down barriers and mixing genres, and thereby elevating the values of intelligence and humanism.”

The festival’s release statement had this to say about her latest film, Barbie: “The tornado that is Barbie, ploughs the same furrow in even more spectacular fashion, by facing up to that ambivalent idol of small girls, a symbol of the female-as-object, but also of woman-emancipated. In this fierce satire about the human condition, Greta Gerwig nails everyday sexism, and stereotypes, with joyful intent. An international cultural phenomenon, Barbie is the second biggest success of the year and has made Greta Gerwig the most bankable female film director in history.”

You can read Gerwig’s statement on the announcement below:

“I am stunned and thrilled and humbled to be serving as the president of the Cannes Film Festival Jury. I cannot wait to see what journeys are in store for all of us. I love films — I love making them, I love going to them, I love talking about them. As a cinephile, Cannes has always been the pinnacle of what the universal language of movies can be… Being in the place of vulnerability, in a dark theatre filled with strangers, watching a brand-new film is my favorite place to be.”

This upcoming Cannes Film Festival, in its 77th year, will run from May 14th to May 25th of next year.