Cannes Critics' Week names director of Lebanese origins as jury president

Audrey Diwan, a French film director of Lebanese origin, was announced as the jury president for the 62nd edition of the Cannes Critics’ Week, which will occur between May 17 and May 25, 2023.  

As a journalist, editor, and screenwriter, Audrey “questions the world around her and hones her professional skillset,” La Semaine de la Critique, the parallel selection of the Festival de Cannes, said.  

In 2019, she directed her first feature film, Losing It, and in 2021, Happening, her second feature, was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Diwan also became the second female French director to win the prize after Agnès Varda’s Vagabond.  

“Born in 1980, she belongs to this new generation of female filmmakers whose sharpness and formal freedom are reinventing the codes and redefining the boundaries of international cinema,” La Semaine de la Critique added.  

Additionally, Audrey Diwan will award the Grand Prize of La Semaine de la Critique to the best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award to the best actor/actress, and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for the best short film.    

She will also be accompanied by Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças; German actor, choreograph, and dancer Franz Rogowski; Indian journalist, curator, and advisor to the programming of the Berlin Film Festival, Meenakshi Shedde; and the American film programmer Kim Yutani, Sundance’s Film Festival programming director.