Touting her lifelong “love affair with the camera,” the Cannes Film Festival announced Monday that Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche has been named president of the 2025 main competition jury. The 78th edition of the festival will run from May 13th to 24th.
Binoche, 60, is the winner of best actress prizes from all three of the major international film festivals (Cannes, Venice and Berlin). She first walked on the Cannes red carpet with her early role in André Téchiné’s “Rendez-vous,” which caused a stir at Cannes 40 years ago.
The Paris-born actress quickly made her name as an international star, appearing in acclaimed French and English-language dramas such as “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “Three Colours: Blue,” “Damage” and “The English Patient,” for which she won an Oscar and a BAFTA in 1997.
“I’m looking forward to sharing [my] life experiences with the members of the jury and the public,” Binoche said in a statement. “In 1985, I walked up the [Cannes theater] steps for the first time with the enthusiasm and uncertainty of a young actress; I never imagined I’d return 40 years later in the honorary role of president of the jury. I appreciate the privilege, the responsibility and the absolute need for humility.”
Binoche is the first French actress to head the jury since Isabelle Huppert in 2009. Following Greta Gerwig’s presidency last year, the selection of Binoche marks the second time that two women have headed the jury in consecutive years since Olivia de Havilland in 1965 and and Sophia Loren in 1966.
The Cannes president leads jury deliberations for the festival’s official selection and gets two votes when voting for the prizes, including the Palme d’Or. This is not Binoche’s first time in the position at a major film fest. In 2019, she served as the jury president at the Berlin Film Festival.
Over her four-decade career, the actress’ credits also include an Oscar-nominated role in “Chocolat,” and films like “Caché,” “Clouds of Sils Maria,” “Certified Copy,” “The Widow of Saint-Pierre,” “The Taste of Things” and 2014’s “Godzilla,” a rare Hollywood venture. She has appeared on television in “The Staircase” and “The New Look.” Currently, she stars opposite “English Patient” castmate Ralph Fiennes in “The Return,” playing in theaters now.
Binoche is famed for her emotional honesty on screen. In a 2023 profile for TheWrap, she was asked about her willingness to be vulnerable in character.
“Every time it has to be scary,” she said. “I mean — it is scary. Being truthful means going down into a place that is very intimate, that belongs to your experience and your education, but is also transforming. Throwing the education away, throwing ideas away in order to really be in the question of: What is me? What am I feeling? What is meaningful to me?”
She added, “The feeling is very freeing, because you are not trying to hold on to things. It’s about experiencing in this very humble place. And the not-knowing place is the best one in a way. Acting is really going back to that place of the I don’t know. It’s about giving something that you don’t know.”
