French actress Isabelle Huppert is set to head the International Jury of the Competition at the upcoming 81st Venice International Film Festival, scheduled to be held from August 28 to September 7, the board of directors of the Biennale di Venezia said in a recent statement.
According to the statement from Biennale di Venezia board of directors, the international jury will decide the winner of the Golden Lion for Best Film and other important awards.
“Isabelle Huppert is an immense actress, demanding, curious and of great generosity. The muse of numerous great filmmakers, she has never shirked the invitation of young or not-so-famous directors who have seen in her the ideal interpreter of their stories,” Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera said in a statement.
“Her enormous willingness to constantly put herself on the line, a sign of her uncommon intelligence, together with her ability to look at cinema beyond geographic and mental boundaries, make her an ideal President of the Jury in a festival open to the entire world such as the Venice Film Festival,” the statement further read.
“We are very grateful to her for accepting the position, aware of the many commitments in film and theatre that she will face in the coming months,” it concluded.
Highlighting her “long and beautiful history” with the festival, Huppert said, “Becoming a privileged spectator is an honour. More than ever, cinema is a promise. The promise to escape, to disrupt, to surprise, to take a good look at the world, united in the differences of our tastes and ideas.”
Huppert's association with the festival dates back to her victories in 1988 and 1995 when she clinched the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress for her performances in Story of Women and La Cérémonie, both directed by Claude Chabrol. Venice also felicitated Huppert in 2005 with a Special Golden Lion.
Apart from Venice, Huppert has won accolades at other festival circuits as well. In 1978, she claimed the best actress award for Chabrol's Violette Nozière at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by another win in 2001 for her role in Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher.
Huppert's performance in Paul Verhoven's Elle earned her an Academy Award nomination in 2017 alongside Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Awards. Berlin Film Festival bestowed upon her an honorary Golden Bear in 2022.
