Cannes Critics Week Names ‘Happening’ Director Audrey Diwan as Jury President

Manori Ravindran
Updated ·2 min read
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Audrey Diwan, director of the 2021 Venice Golden Lion winner “Happening,” has been named jury president of the 62nd annual Critics Week.

The jury members include Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças (“Tabu,” “Zama”); German actor, choreographer and dancer Franz Rogowski (“A Hidden Life”); Indian journalist, curator and Berlinale programming advisor Meenakshi Shedde; and Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.

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The Critics Week sidebar runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, and focuses on first and second films. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania (“The Man who Sold his Skin”) served as last year’s jury president.

Diwan, a former journalist, made her debut with “Losing It” in 2019. Two years later, the filmmaker took home the Venice Film Festival’s top prize for her sophomore feature, the searing 2021 abortion drama “Happening,” which was snapped up for distribution by IFC Films. She became only the second woman (after 2020’s “Nomadland” helmer Chloe Zhao) to win the Golden Lion since Agnès Varda, who won in 1985 for “Vagabond.”

Critics Week described Diwan in press materials as belonging to a “new generation of female filmmakers whose sharpness and formal freedom are reinventing the codes and redefining the boundaries of international cinema.”

Diwan’s jury will award the Critics Week Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for best actor and actress, and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.

The 2022 edition saw Andrés Ramírez Pulido’s “La Jauría” take the Grand Prize, while Charlotte Wells picked up the French Touch Prize for “Aftersun,” which went on to earn its co-lead Paul Mescal his first Oscar nomination. Elsewhere, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award went to Zelda Samson for “Love according to Dalva” by Emmanuelle Nicot, while the Leitz Cine Discovery Prize was awarded to “Ice Merchants” by João Gonzalez.

The program runs from May 17-25.

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