50 years after fellow citizen Ingrid Bergman, Swedish director Ruben Östlund, a two-time winner of the Palme d’or, will preside over the Jury o

« I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honor of Jury president for this year’s Competition at the Festival de Cannes. Nowhere in the film world is the anticipation as strong as when the curtain rises on the films in Competition at the Festival. It is a privilege to be part of it, together with the Cannes audience of connoisseurs. I am sincere when I say that cinema culture is in its most important period ever. The cinema has a unique aspect – there, we watch together, and it demands more on what is shown and increases the intensity of the experience. It makes us reflect in a different way than when we dopamine scroll in front of the individual screens », declared the futur President Ruben Östlund.

With a track record of only 6 features, the filmmaker was already selected twice at Un Certain Regard, where he was awarded the Jury Prize in 2014, before later entering the Competition. No sooner does he appears there that the Palme d’Or is awarded to him twice; first for The Square at the 70th Festival de Cannes, and then for his next film acclaimed last year, Triangle of Sadness.

After studying cinema in Gothenburg, he directed his first feature film, The Guitar Mongoloid, in 2004. On the edge of the documentary genre, the film describes the intersecting destinies of outcasts in a fictional city that closely resembles Gothenburg. Humor as a tool of sociological description is already apparent.
His next short film, Autobiographical Scene Number 6882, gathers all the ingredients of his future work, which are affirmed in Involuntary, a feature film selected at Un Certain Regard in 2008. Östlund positions the camera at a relevant distance to better observe human behavior: small weaknesses and major flaws caused by group dynamics are then dissected to the point of discomfort. Two years later, Incident by a Bank won the Golden Bear for best short film at the 60th Berlinale – it examines the reactions of passers-by to a bank robbery. His third feature film, Play, which was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2011, describes harassment between youth gangs. When it was released in Sweden it gave rise to a major debate across Swedish society.
In Force Majeure, which was screened at Un Certain Regard in 2014, the situation takes on the aspect of an avalanche where a father prefers to take cover rather than save his wife and children: how can he accept the aftermath, in bad faith and in fear of losing face? Such is the issue that the director examines with ferocious acidity.

Ruben Östlund repeatedly explores a provocative dialectic which has become his signature: an initial situation sets the stage for a sociological examination where the baser instincts of our humanity are painstakingly and uncompromisingly examined with corrosive humor.

In 2017, in The Square, he tells the fictional story of an artistic experiment he conducted in his native country. The film addresses brilliantly the boundaries of public space, art and the animal aspects within ourselves.

Finally, in 2022, Triangle of Sadness chronicles a cruise ship caught in a storm that reshuffles the cards of class struggle in Western societies in a nauseating hullabaloo.

By inviting Ruben Östlund to preside over the Jury, the Festival de Cannes wishes to pay a tribute to films that are uncompromising and forthright and which constantly demand that viewers challenge themselves and that art continue to invent itself.

Ruben Östlund has therefore become the third two-time winner of the Palme d’or to be the President of the Jury, following Francis Ford Coppola and Emir Kusturica, and the very first to take on this role the year after his acclaim in Cannes.

« As President, concludes Ruben Östlund, I will remind my colleagues in the Jury about the social function of the cinema. A good movie relates to the collective experience, stimulates us to think and makes us want to discuss what we have seen – So let’s watch together! ».

f the 76th edition of the Festival de Cannes to be held from May 16 to 27.

On Friday, July 8, 2022, Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad were arrested and imprisoned at an unknown location for protesting against violence against civilians in Iran. Mohammad Rasoulof had already been deprived of his freedom of movement and work since 2017, following the screening of his film A Man of Integrity, which won the Un Certain Regard Award at the 70th edition of the Festival de Cannes. His films Manuscripts Don’t Burn, which won the Fipresci Prize in 2013 and Goodbye, which won the Best Director Prize at Un Certain Regard in 2011, had also been screened in Cannes. He had subsequently won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival in 2020 with There is No Evil.
Today, on Monday, July 11, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was also arrested in Tehran. The director presented numerous works at Cannes, including Three Faces, which was selected in Competition in 2018 and awarded the Prize for Best Screenplay, as well as Crimson Gold, which won the Jury Prize at Un Certain Regard in 2003. Jafar Panahi also won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2015 for his film Taxi.

The Festival de Cannes strongly condemns these arrests as well as the wave of repression obviously in progress in Iran against its artists. The Festival calls for the immediate release of Mohammad Rasoulof, Mostafa Aleahmad and Jafar Panahi.
The Festival de Cannes also wishes to reassert its support to all those who, throughout the world, are subjected to violence and repression. The Festival remains and will always remain a haven for artists from all over the world and it will relentlessly be at their service in order to convey their voices loud and clear, in the defense of freedom of creation and freedom of speech.