Cannes Festival picks French actor Vincent Lindon to head jury

Veteran French actor Vincent Lindon will head the main jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival which awards the coveted Palme d'Or top prize, organisers said Tuesday.

The jury under Lindon, who co-starred in the 2021 winner "Titane", will choose between 21 movies in the main competition at the film fest which runs from May 17 to 28.

Lindon, 62, will be accompanied by eight fellow jurors.

They are British actress and director Rebecca Hall, Indian actress Deepika Padukone, Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, Italian actress and director Jasmine Trinca, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, French director Ladj Ly, American director Jeff Nichols, and Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

The line-up for this year's festival, the 75th Cannes edition, is a mix of cult arthouse directors and Hollywood glamour.

Canadian horror maestro David Cronenberg, US filmmaker James Gray and France's Claire Denis are among the competitors for the Palme d'Or.

They are expected to bring a bevy of stars to the red carpet, with Cronenberg's sci-fi/horror cross-over "Crimes of the Future" starring Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen.

Denis returns with a thriller set in Central America -- "The Stars at Noon" -- featuring Taron Egerton and Robert Pattinson.

Gray's entry, "Armageddon Time", is a tale based on his New York adolescence featuring Anne Hathaway, Oscar Isaac, Cate Blanchett and Anthony Hopkins.

Tom Cruise will attend the much-delayed world premiere of "Top Gun: Maverick", the sequel to his 1986 blockbuster, playing out of competition.

And Tom Hanks will be in town for "Elvis", in which he co-stars as the rock'n'roll star's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, in the latest from Australian director Baz Luhrmann who previously lit up Cannes with "Moulin Rouge!" and "Gatsby".

In a statement Tuesday Lindon said he was "extremely proud to be given, amid the upheaval of the many events we are going through in the world, the splendid and heavy task of presiding the jury".

He and his jury would "strive to take good care of the films of the future which all harbour the same secret hope of courage, loyalty and freedom", Lindon said.

When announcing this year's lineup earlier in April, festival director Thierry Fremaux had already given a nod to the difficult global situation, saying the announcement came "after two years of crisis that we won't recover from quickly, and at a time of sadness and war in Europe."

A Ukrainian film will play out of competition -- "The Natural History of Destruction" from director Sergei Loznitsa about the destruction of German cities by Allied bombers in World War II.

The main competition will also mark the third nomination for Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, who was unable to attend last year when his film "Petrov's Flu" was in competition due to an embezzlement conviction that his supporters say was revenge for his anti-authoritarian stance.

He relocated to Germany this year after his travel ban was lifted and returns to Cannes with "Tchaikovsky's Wife" about the private life of the famous composer.

He told AFP in an interview published Tuesday that Russia was "self-killing" with its war in Ukraine and that domestic support for the invasion was the result of "many years of terrible propaganda."

Serebrennikov said he felt "just horror, sadness, shame, pain" about the invasion.

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