Isabelle Huppert will preside over the main jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival.
The revered French actor has a longstanding rapport with the Lido, having won Venice’s
Coppa Volpi for best actress twice, first with “Story of Women” in 1988, and subsequently with “La Cérémonie” in 1995, both directed by Claude Chabrol.
Huppert – who has made a total of eight films with Chabrol – also has a close bond with the Cannes Film Festival where in 1978 she won the best actress statuette for Chabrol’s “Violette.” In 2001, Huppert won her second best actress award at Cannes for her tour-de-force performance as a sado-masochistic music professor in Michael Haneke’s “The Piano.” In 2005, Huppert was honored by Venice with a Special Golden Lion for her titular role in “Gabrielle,” Patrice Chéreau’s costume drama about an imploded marriage.
In 2017 she gained her first Academy Award nomination for her role as a rape victim who tracks down her assailant in Paul Verhoven’s “Elle,” for which she also won a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award. In 2022, Huppert was celebrated by the Berlin Film Festival with an Honorary Golden Bear.
“Isabelle Huppert is an immense actress. Demanding, curious and of great generosity,” said Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera in a statement.
“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,” Barbera noted.
“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,” Barbera went on to add.
“We are very grateful to her for accepting the position, aware of the many commitments in film and theater that she will face in the coming months,” he concluded.
Huppert pointed out her “long and beautiful history” with the festival. “Becoming a privileged spectator is an honor,” she said. “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.”
The 81st edition of Venice will run Aug. 28-Sept. 7