Juliette Binoche Named Cannes Film Festival 2025 Jury President

Juliette Binoche, the Oscar- and César-winning actress who’s a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, will serve as its jury president for the 2025 edition. The festival runs May 13 – 24 on the French Riviera, where Binoche will be responsible for overseeing the main competition jury, comprised of an international crop of actors and filmmakers.

The iconic Binoche has been a Cannes mainstay since André Téchiné’s “Rendez-vous” made her the belle of the festival in 1985. That’s exactly 40 years ago come this year’s Cannes. In other words, Binoche was born at Cannes. She’s taken many projects to the festival, including the films of Michael Haneke and Claire Denis, and she won Best Actress for Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” in 2010. Last year, she gave Meryl Streep (perhaps the equivalent of an actress of Binoche’s stature here in the United States) the Honorary Palme d’Or. In 2023, filmmaker Anh Hung Tran won Best Director at Cannes for “The Taste of Things,” starring Binoche and her ex Benoît Magimel.

“I’m looking forward to sharing these life experiences with the members of the Jury and the public,” Binoche said in a statement. “In 1985, I walked up the 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.”

Last year’s jury president Greta Gerwig oversaw an awards lineup that included prizes for Oscar nominees “Anora,” “Emilia Pérez,” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” Denmark’s “The Girl with the Needle” also emerged from the Cannes competition to a Best International Feature Oscar nomination, along with “Sacred Fig.” The French film festival is increasingly becoming an Oscar bellwether, with Ruben Östlund’s 2023 jury giving awards to eventual Oscar winners “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.”

Binoche is not the first female jury president to lead Cannes, of course, after Gerwig, Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert, Jane Campion, Liv Ullmann, Jeanne Moreau, and others. But Binoche’s position marks only the second time one woman has succeeded another. (Sophia Loren, 1966 jury president, succeeded 1965’s Olivia de Havilland.)

The 2025 edition of Cannes will present the Palme d’Or and other prizes at the festival’s awards on Saturday, May 24. The lineup will be announced this spring, with eyes on Lynne Ramsay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Joachim Trier, Julia Ducournau, Kelly Reichardt, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Bi Gan, and more to potentially premiere new films there.