Examining the strange arrangement of the jury of Cannes 2022 Festival / Why shouldn’t Farhadi be the president?

Theater News Base: If in a simple review the judges of the last 40 years Cannes festival” To evaluate has been less periodic in terms of the composition of the jury as this year; The period was also unusual in terms of the schedule for introducing the judges, and the chairman of the board was introduced only about three weeks before the start of the festival.

In the review we had from the jury of the last four decades, regardless of that فرهادی He is our compatriot. We must say that there has been less period like this year in which one of the members of the jury is far more successful and famous in terms of cinematic record than the chairman of the festival.

First of all, we should mention that in the last 40 years, 75% of the courses (ie 30 courses), the chairman of the jury has been the director, and he has always been a priority for the director, and only 10 courses (ie 25% of the courses) have reached the actors. Of course, the same actors who have been important stars, unlike in recent times, are sometimes like that Robert Deniro And Sean Penn They also had experience in filmmaking, and it is noteworthy that these great actors were often absent from the constituent members of their cast.

There is always an unwritten rule at festivals, especially the Cannes Film Festival, that the biggest and most important figure on the board is the group leader. It is easier to say that Scorsese could not be among the judges and become the chairman of the jury Sigourney Weaver (meaning the jury of 1998) or when in 1993 Abbas Kiarostami and Amir Kostoritsa are on the jury, the chairman of the jury is one of the greatest filmmakers in French history. Louis Mall Is in charge.

Or when Ang Lee Among the judges is that the chairman of the board is not Daniel Otto, an actor, but the director is a filmmaker of the same size or more important than Ang Lee, and that person is none other than Steven Spielberg. (I mean the 2013 delegation) or, for example, when in 2019 four important filmmakers George Lantimus، Pavo Pavlikovsky, Kelly Rickard And Alice Rorwacher Among the board are the chairman of that board Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu He is a famous Mexican filmmaker.

Now, back to the judges of this year’s festival, what an interaction has taken place in the minds of the festival officials, which will be chaired by Vincent London. There is no director of feature film in the history of Vincent London as the chairman of the jury. Among the important films of this 62-year-old French actor, we can mention “Titan”, “Paparazzi”, “Rodin” and “Another World”, which can be said that none of them are internationally famous except “Titan”. Meanwhile, Asghar Farhadi is the creator of two films that won the Academy Award for Best International Film; A record that few international filmmakers have achieved in the history of cinema.

Apart from important film awards, Farhadi has been very vocal in every project he has directed over the years, and he is definitely more famous in cinema circles than the director of the festival. The most important film awards London has in its repertoire are only one Cesar Award for acting and one Cannes Film Award, both of which he made for the 2015 film “Maybe the Size of a Man”. Stephen Brize Has received.

In the opinion of the author of this text, it may not be an exaggeration to say that London, with its poor artistic record, would have raised the voices of many filmmakers in those countries, even if it had become a judge of much less important festivals. It has taken over their festival and it is not clear by what criteria the reason for choosing this actor was in the panel of filmmakers such as Led Lee, Jeff Nichols, Joachim Trier and of course Asghar Farhadi.