Nadine Labaki Returns to Cannes as Jury Member

Lebanese actress-director, Nadine Labaki has been selected as a jury member for the 77th Cannes Film Festival, six years after she became the first Arab woman to win a major prize at the event. 

The Oscar-nominated Lebanese filmmaker will be joined by Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, U.S. actress Lily Gladstone, French actress Eva Green, Spanish director and screenwriter J.A. Bayona, Italian actor Pierfrancisco Favino, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, and French actor and producer Omar Sy.

The jury will be headed by Barbie filmmaker Greta Gerwig and will review 22 films in the main competition of the festival, which begins on May 14. 

They will select the winners across several categories, including the prestigious Palme d’Or for the best film and other key prizes. The winners will be announced on the closing day of the festival, May 25.

Labaki has long been a prominent figure in Middle Eastern cinema, renowned for her first feature "Caramel" and "Where do We Go Now?". She gained international recognition in 2018 after she won the Jury Prize for "Capernaum".

Other credits include O Milagre for the sketch film Rio, I Love You. She is currently working on her next feature.

Her ties with Cannesl go back two decades when she participated in its La Résidence de la Cinéfondation program in 2004 to write and develop "Caramel". In 2011, she presented "Where Do We Go Now?" in the Un Certain Regard selection.

In 2019, she became the first Lebanese female filmmaker to be nominated for an Oscar as "Capernaum" was listed for Best Foreign Language Film. She was also part of the jury at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

Labaki is also an actress and has starred in the Netflix film "Perfect Strangers", as well as "Costa Brava, Lebanon".