Laurence Fishburne to Head Zurich Festival Jury

COLOGNE, Germany - Laurence Fishburne will be the international jury president for the 2011 Zurich Film Festival (Sept. 22 - Oct.2). The Matrix and CSI star is currently shooting Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, where he plays Perry White. Zuirch will also give Fishburne a special achievement award in honor of his life's work.
Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which stars Fishburne alongside Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, will open the 7th Zurich film festival Sept. 22. The Warner Bros. release is an action thriller centering on the outbreak of a deadly virus.
Joining Fishburne on the Zurich international jury is former Paramount Film Group president John Lesher, whose, during his tenure at the studio greenlight such Oscar winners as No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and An Inconvenient Truth. Actors Alice Eve (The Raven, Men in Black III) and Denmark's Paprika Steen (The Celebration), European Film Market head Beki Probst and Oscar-nominated Serbian director Stevan Arsenijevic (Love and Other Crimes) complete the international jury. Charles Ferguson, the Oscar-winning director of financial collapse doc Inside Job, will head up the international documentary jury in Zurich this year, joined by producers John Battsek (One Day in September) and Stephen Nemeth (Dogtown and Z Boys) and documentary directors Eline Flipse (Anybody There…?) and Nino Kirtadze (Durakovo: Village of Fools).
Also attending this year's Zurich fest is two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn, who will receive Zurich's Golden Icon Award. The full Zurich festival line-up will be announced in the coming weeks.

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