Argentine filmmaker Damián Szifron, director of Wild Tales, was announced yesterday as one of the nine jury members that will select this year’s winners in the Palme d’Or competition at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which will be presided by Swedish director Ruben Östlund.
A native of Ramos Mejía in the province of Buenos Aires, Szifron was born in 1975. He wrote and and directed the short films Kan, el Trueno (1997), Punto muerto (1998) and Los últimos días (1999), before emerging in 2002 with the hit comedy-mystery series Los simuladores. In 2003, he made his debut feature film The Bottom of the Sea / El fondo del mar, the saga of a young architect tormented by suspicions of his girlfriend's infidelity, which received ten Silver Condor nominations.
His sophomore feature, the buddy action comedy Tiempo de valientes, co-starred Diego Peretti and Luis Luque in the tale of a psychologist and a depressed cop thrown into a homicide investigation together; like its predecessor, it received numerous Silver Condor nods. However, Wild Tales / Relatos salvajes (2014) brought Szifron his broadest acclaim. The film premiered in the Palme d’Or official competition at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Szifron recently premiered his most recent feature—and his English-language debut—the American thriller To Catch a Killer, starring Shailene Woodley, Ben Mendelsohn, Jovan Adepo and Ralph Ineson.
The other Cannes jury members announced are French actor Denis Menochet; American actor, director, and producer Brie Larson; Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani; Zambian-Welsh filmmaker Rungano Nyoni; American actor-director Paulo Dano; Afghan writer-director Atiq Rahimi; and French director Julia Ducouranu.
The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will take place May 16-27.
