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Cannes Film Festival organizers announce jury lineup

French actress Lea Seydoux and Canadian director Denis Villeneuve have joined the jury of the 71st Cannes Film Festival

Cate Blanchett, President of the Jury of the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival EPA-EFE/IAN LANGSDON

Cate Blanchett, President of the Jury of the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival

© EPA-EFE/IAN LANGSDON

PARIS, April 18. /TASS/. French actress Lea Seydoux and Canadian director Denis Villeneuve have joined the jury of the 71st Cannes Film Festival under the presidency of Australian actress Cate Blanchett, the festival’s organizers said in a statement.

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"Facing a new Competition which presents filmmakers who will compete for the first time the jury of the next edition of the Festival de Cannes… invites five women, four men, seven nationalities and five continents under the presidency of Cate Blanchett," the statement reads.

On Tuesday, the festival's Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux said that prominent Russian film director Andrei Zvyagintsev, who won the Cannes jury prize for Loveless in 2017, has been invited to serve on the jury. Apart from Zvyagintsev, Seydoux and Villeneuve, the jury will also include American writer and director Ava DuVernay, Chinese actor Chang Chen, Burundian singer Khadja Nin and American actress Kristen Stewart.

The artistic director said earlier that the festival’s organizers had chosen 18 movies out of the 1,906 submitted full-length feature films to be included in the main competition. Among them are Russian movie director Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto (or Summer), Le Livre d’Image (of The Image Book) by Jean-Luc Godard, a leading member of the French New Wave movement, and Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest movie Todos Lo Saben (or Everybody Knows).

The Cannes Film Festival was first held on France's Cote d'Azur back in 1946. This year, it will take place on May 8-19.

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