Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho, whose second feature, Aquarius, was a critical hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, has been named jury president for this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week sidebar.
Filho will oversee a five-person jury that will award the section’s main prizes, including the Nespresso Grand Prize and the France 4 Visionary Award to one of the seven feature films competing in Critics’ Week, as well as the Leica Cine Discovery Prize to one of the 10 short films in the selection this year.
Joining Filho on the 56th annual Critics’ Week jury are Diana Bustamante Escobar, producer and artistic director of Colombia’s Cartagena Film Festival; Eric Kohn, chief film critic for Indiewire; Hania Mroue, director of Metropolis Art Cinema in Lebanon; and French actor Niels Schneider (Heartbeats).
This year’s Critics’ Week lineup will be announced in the coming weeks. The 2017 Cannes Film Festival is set to run May 17-28.
