Ursula Meier to Preside Over Camera d’Or Jury at Cannes
Swiss filmmaker Ursula Meier is set to preside over the Camera d’Or jury at the Cannes Film Festival, whose mission is to select the best first film presented in Cannes’ Official Selection, Critics’ Week or Directors’ Fortnight.
Meier is best known for directing “Home,” her feature debut, and “Sister,” which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2012. “Radical and poetic, the first is a fable shot with pale light and warm photography. The second is a modern tale in the form of a sober and poignant family chronicle,” Cannes said, adding that, “since 1994, Ursula Meier has compiled a bold cinematography that emphasizes the complexity of the world.”
Reacting to her appointment as head of the Camera d’Or jury, Meier said: “A first film is the place of all possibilities, of all audacity, of all risk-taking, of all madness.”
“It is often said that you should not put everything into a first film but the opposite is true, you should put in exactly that – everything – just as you should put everything into every film while always preserving deep within yourself that original, vital, brutal, wild desire of the first time,” she added.
Meier started her career as assistant director to Alain Tanner, a major figure in Swiss cinema. In 2014, she took part in the film “Bridges of Sarajevo,” a collective work by 13 European filmmakers that was presented at Cannes in the Official Selection.
Meier and her jury of six professionals will present the Camera d’Or award during Cannes’ closing ceremony May 19. Last year’s Camera d’Or was won by Léonor Serraille for “Montparnasse Bienvenue,” which world premiered in Un Certain Regard.
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