The rest of the Venice jury, presided by Isabelle Huppert, was announced this morning.
The actress will be joined by James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz, and Zhang Ziyi. That’s a lot of top notch filmmakers …
Wait, James Gray!? Huppert and Gray back together again after their Cannes 2009 debacle? After he, supposedly, called her a “fascist b*tch”? This should be fun to watch.
Huppert was the Cannes Jury president in 2009, she presided over her fellow jurors, which included Gray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lee Chang-Dong, Robin Wright and Asia Argento. They awarded the Palme d’Or Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” but it seemed to be a concession choice.
Behind the scenes, Huppert and Gray “fought bitterly” over which film deserved the Palme, partly because she loved Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” and he loved Audiard’s “A Prophet.”
The cultural editor of Le Figaro, Jean-Luc Wachthausen, reported at the time that tensions between both were so high that Gray wanted to quit the jury several days into the festival because of Huppert’s “somewhat dictatorial behavior…”
Huppert’s presidential style was so dictatorial that Gray, allegedly, even went so far as to call her a “fascist b*tch” by the end of their voting sessions. (Cannes President) Gilles Jacob leapt to Huppert’s defense amid the scuttlebutt, dismissing much of it as sexist hearsay.
The 81st Venice International Film Festival will open on August 28 and continue on until September 7, 2024.
