Östlund is the first Swedish Cannes jury president since Ingrid Bergman in 1973.
Cannes Film Festival has appointed Swedish director Ruben Östlund as jury president for its upcoming 76th edition, which is scheduled to take place from May 16 to 27.
Östlund won the festival’s top prize twice, for Triangle of Sadness in 2022 and for The Square in 2017. Before that, he presented two films at Un Certain Regard, including Force Majeure, which won the Jury Prize.
Speaking about his appointment, Ruben Östlund said: “I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honour 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.”
After studying cinema in Gothenburg, he directed his first feature film, The Guitar Mongoloid, in 2004. 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 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 humour.
The organisers of the event added: “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.”
Ruben Östlund concluded: “As president, 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!”
