Baloji And Emmanuelle Béart To Preside Over Cannes Caméra D’Or Jury For Best First Film
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Baloji And Emmanuelle Béart To Preside Over Cannes Caméra D’Or Jury For Best First Film

Zac Ntim
·2-min read

Belgian rapper and filmmaker Baloji and French film actress Emmanuelle Béart have been announced as co-presidents of the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or jury for the upcoming 77th edition, running from May 14 to 25.

The award for the best first film is open to all the debut feature films presented in Official Selection and the parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.

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The Caméra d’Or Jury has been co-chaired three times before: by actress Françoise Fabian and director Daniel Schmid in 1996, by Marthe Keller and Géraldine Chaplin in 2002, and by brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne in 2006.

Announcing the pair today, the festival described Baloji and Béart as “free spirits with no limits, who rely on their art to achieve creative freedom.”  Baloji is best known for his directorial debut Omen, which debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it picked up the New Voice Prize in Un Certain Regard. Béart is a French screen veteran with over 60 credits across features like Mission: Impossible (1996), Nelly and Mr. Arnaud (1995), and 8 Women (2002).

“Being a self-taught filmmaker and a filmmaker from the Congolese diaspora, it’s a great honor to be able to witness the vitality of first-time directors, to discover their strong singularities and their inaugural work, which will have a lasting impact on the identity of their filmography,” said Baloji.

Béart added: “A first film is about the impossibility of doing anything other than delving into the depths of one’s being to find out what we can’t keep quiet about. A deeply moving and terribly free birth: no one is waiting for you yet. We will honor our duty with wonder and respect.”

Baloji And Béart follow French actress Anaïs Demoustier, whose 2023 jury handed the Caméra D’Or to Pham Thien An for Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.

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