French star Juliette Binoche has been named the president of the international jury for the 2025 Cannes film festival.
The actress succeeds Barbie director Greta Gerwig in the presidential post and will oversee the group of film professionals picking this year’s Palme d’Or winner.
Binoche made her Cannes debut exactly 40 years ago, with the premiere of André Téchiné’s Rendez-vous in 1985. It was her first major film role and made her a star. “I was born at the Festival de Cannes,” she would later say.
Binoche has been a Cannes regular ever since, returning to the Croisette with features from some of international cinema’s most acclaimed auteurs, from Michael Haneke (Code Unknown, Caché), and David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Three Colors: Red), Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria), Claire Denis (Let the Sunshine In), and Anh Hung Tran (The Taste of Things). She won Cannes best actress honor in 2010 for her role as an antiques dealer in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy.
“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,” Binoche said in a statement. “I appreciate the privilege, the responsibility and the absolute need for humility.”
Along with the Cannes honor, Binoche is the only actress to have won best actress at all three top European festivals (Cannes, Venice, Berlin), taking Venice’s Volpi Cup in 1994 for Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Blue and the Berlin Silver Bear for her performance as a WW2 nurse in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, the role that would also win her a BAFTA and an Oscar for best supporting actress.
More recently, Binoche has played Coco Chanel in Todd A. Kessler’s AppleTV+ series The New Look and re-teamed with her English Patient co-star Ralph Fiennes for The Return, Uberto Pasolini’s rough-hewn take on Homer’s The Odyssey. Last year she took over from Polish director Agnieszka Holland as the president of the European Film Academy.
The 78th Cannes International Film Festival runs May 13 – 24, 2025.
English (US) ·