Greta Gerwig is hitting the Croisette.
The Barbie helmer, fresh off her first-ever best director nomination at the Golden Globes (Gerwig’s $1.4 billion toy-to-screen blockbuster picked up a total of 9 Golden Globe noms), has been confirmed as the Jury President for the 2024 Cannes International Film Festival.
“A heroine of our modern times, Greta Gerwig shakes up the status quo between a highly codified cinema industry and an era that is demanding greater scrutiny,” Cannes said in its announcement.
“Yesterday, ambassador of independent American cinema, today at the summit of worldwide box office success, Greta Gerwig manages to combine what was previously judged to be incompatible: Delivering arthouse blockbusters, narrowing the gap between art and industry, exploring contemporary feminist issues with deft as well as depth, and declaring her demanding artistic ambition from within an economic model that she embraces in order to put to better use.
“Whether acting, writing, or directing, her artistic endeavors have recurrent leitmotifs, such as family upheaval, adolescent rites of passage, fear of loss of social status or the emergence of artistic vocation via characters that are free, sometimes fragile and marginal, but also fierce.”
Gerwig will be the first American female director to be Cannes Jury President. She’s only the second female director to take over the post, following Jane Campion in 2014, and the second American woman to do so, following actress Olivia de Haviland, who was Cannes’ first female Jury President in 1965.
“This is an obvious choice since Greta Gerwig so audaciously embodies the renewal of world cinema, for which Cannes is each year both the forerunner and the sounding board,” said Cannes Festival President Iris Knobloch and Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux. Alongside her talent as a filmmaker, they said, Gerwig “is also the representative of an era that is breaking down barriers and mixing genres, and thereby elevating the values of intelligence and humanism.”
Despite the praise, this will be the first time Gerwig will walk the Cannes red carpet in an official capacity. None of her films as a director have premiered at the French festival.
“I love films – I love making them, I love going to them, I love talking about them,” said Gerwig in a statement. “As a cinephile, Cannes has always been the pinnacle of what the universal language of movies can be. Being in the place of vulnerability, in a dark theater filled with strangers, watching a brand-new film is my favorite place to be. I am stunned and thrilled and humbled to be serving as the president of the Cannes Film Festival Jury. I cannot wait to see what journeys are in store for all of us!”
Gerwig’s career has taken her in front of and behind the camera, from her start as an actor and screenwriter — alongside starring in, she co-wrote Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) with Joe Swanberg, and Frances Ha (2012) and Mistress America (2015) with partner Noah Baumbach — before making her first sole directing effort in breakout hit Lady Bird in 2017.
Nominated for 5 Oscars, including a best directing nom, Lady Bird grossed close to $80 million worldwide. Gerwig had arrived.
Her 2019 follow-up, a fresh take on period classic Little Women for Sony, was a bonafide crossover hit, earning $218 million worldwide and establishing Gerwig in the top tier of studio directors.
But no one was prepared for the gargantuan success of Barbie. The pink-tinged tentpole starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling was the biggest hit of 2023, earning more than $1.4 billion and, to date, owning awards season. She is, said Cannes in its announcement, “an international cultural phenomenon…the most bankable female film director in history.”
The 77th Cannes Film Festival runs May 14-25, 2024.
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