Baloji and Emmanuelle Béart will co-preside over Cannes Jury

As rich dialogue and inspiring gaze arise from encounters, the Festival de Cannes is eager to bring together Emmanuelle Béart and Baloji to co-preside over the Jury that will honour one of the first films presented in the Festival’s Official Selection or its parallel sections.

An unprecedented pairing since French actress Emmanuelle Béart and director and songwriter Baloji, who evolves in Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have never met. She has worked with some of the world’s greatest filmmakers, dazzling both screen and stage with her incandescent performance. He is a bold, visionary creator, who made two short films before receiving the New Voice Prize at Un Certain Regard in 2023 for his acclaimed debut feature Omen.

An obvious pairing as both are free spirits with no limits, who rely on their art to achieve creative freedom. Through her impressive filmography and her humanitarian commitment, Emmanuelle Béart is forever supporting a filmmaking to be shared, to emancipate, transcend borders and help us live together. Baloji, in his first feature film with impressive aesthetic mastery, delivers a chronicle that transcends otherness through the prism of magical realism.

Delighted to be paired at the head of the Caméra d’or Jury, Baloji and Emmanuelle Béart will combine their voices to welcome the first features of filmmakers who look at the world with inspiration, tell us about it with emotion and invite us to discuss it with the conviction of beginnings. “Being a self-taught filmmaker and a filmmaker from the Congolese diaspora,” confides Baloji, “it’s a great honour to be able to witness the vitality of first-time directors, to discover their strong singularities and their inaugural work, which will have a lasting impact on the identity of their filmography.” Emmanuelle Béart declares: “A first film is about the impossibility of doing anything other than delving into the depths of one’s being to find out what we can’t keep quiet about. A deeply moving and terribly free birth: no one is waiting for you yet. We will honor our duty with wonder and respect.”

The Caméra d’or Jury has been co-chaired three times before: by actress Françoise Fabian and director Daniel Schmid in 1996, by Marthe Keller and Géraldine Chaplin in 2002, and by brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne in 2006.

In 2023, the Caméra d’Or was awarded to Pham Thien An for Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell by the Jury presided over by French actress Anaïs Demoustier.