Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher has been selected to preside over the Caméra d’Or jury at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, running May 13-24. Th
Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher has been selected to preside over the Caméra d’Or jury at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, running May 13-24.
The Caméra d’Or (golden camera) is awarded to the best first feature film in Cannes’ Official Selection, or in the parallel Critics’ Week or Directors’ Fortnight sections.
Last year’s prize went to Norwegian director Halfdan Ullmann Tøondel for his Un Certain Regard premiere Armand.
Rohrwacher is a Cannes regular whose own debut feature Heavenly Body premiered in Directors’ Fortnight in 2011 and her follow-up film The Wonders won the Grand Prix in Competition in 2014.
Her 2018 film Happy As Lazzaro screened in Competition and shared the prize for best screenplay with Jafar Panahi for 3 Faces. She was last in Cannes with La Chimera in Competition in 2023.
In a statement on Friday (April 18), the festival described Rohrwacher as “a figure of the new Italian cinema” who “reconciles the naturalism of De Sica and the dreamlike vision of Fellini in films that are always on the edge, between storytelling and documentary”.
Rohrwacher said, “First times are always important and they stay with us for the rest of our lives. Like entering an unfamiliar room, approaching one’s beloved for a first kiss, or landing on a foreign shore. There’s something golden that haloes these moments in our memory. Is that why the most prestigious award for first films is called Caméra d’or?”
The festival previously announced that Juliette Binoche will preside over the festival’s main competition jury. Robert De Niro will receive an honourary Palme d’Or.
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