© Lubna Azabal © Dominique Charriau/Getty Images / Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar @ Guy Ferrandis / Paolo Moretti © Angèle Marignac-Serra ECAL / Claudine Nougaret © Raymond Depardon / Vladimir Perišić © Philippe Lebruman
Flanked by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, Paolo Moretti, Claudine Nougaret and Vladimir Perišić, the Belgian actress Lubna Azabal will award the Short Film Palme d’or and the 3 La Cinef prizes, the Festival de Cannes’ selection dedicated to film schools.
The Jury will discover the 11 films in the Short Film Competition and the 18 films in La Cinef selection unveiled today.
JURY MEMBERS OF THE SHORT FILM AND LA CINEF
LUBNA AZABAL - President
BelgiumActress
After attending the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Lubna Azabal began her acting career in theater. In 1997, she got her first role in front of the camera in Vincent Lannoo’s short film J’adore le cinéma (I Love the Movies). She went on to work with directors such as Michel Deville, Ridley Scott, André Téchiné, Nadir Moknèche and Denis Villeneuve. She was noticed for her performance in Tony Gatlif’s Exils, which won Best Director Award at the Festival de Cannes in 2004. In 2018, she returned to Cannes with director Meryem Benm’Barek’s Sofia, which won the Un Certain Regard Award for Best Screenplay. In 2019, she presented Adam by Maryam Touzani, with whom she was back in Cannes in 2022 for The Blue Caftan, which earned her a third Magritte Award for Best Actress in 2024.
© Dominique Charriau / Getty Images
MARIE-CASTILLE MENTION-SCHAAR
FranceDirector, screenwriter, producer
She began her career in the U.S. as deputy international editor at The Hollywood Reporter, then moved to Columbia Pictures to manage remake projects. Returning to France in 1994, she produced some twenty films through her production companies Vendredi and Willow. After co-writing La Première Etoile, she wrote and directed her first film Ma première fois (2011), followed by Bowling (2012) and Once in a life time (2014). In 2015, Heaven Will Wait was selected at numerous festivals, and earned Noémie Merlant a nomination for the César for Best Emerging Actress. After All About Mothers (2017), her sixth film, A Good Man is part of the Official Selection 2020 of the Festival de Cannes. Her seventh film, Divertimento, was released in January 2023. She is the founder of the Cercle Féminin du Cinéma Français and Officier des Arts et des Lettres.
© Guy Ferrandis
PAOLO MORETTI
ItalyFilm programmer
Currently director of the cinema department at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), director of the Grütli Cinemas in Geneva and cinema curator at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, Paolo Moretti was general delegate of the Directors’ Fortnight, the parallel selection of the Festival de Cannes, from 2018 to 2022. He worked for numerous film festivals and institutions in Europe, including the Centre Pompidou and Cinéma du Réel in Paris, the Filmoteca Española in Madrid, the Leeds International Film Festival and the Portuguese Cinematheque in Lisbon. From 2008 to 2011, he was programming advisor and chief assistant to the director of the Venice Film Festival. Between 2014 and 2019 he directed the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival and was a member of the selection committees of the FIDMarseille and Visions du Réel festivals.
© Angèle Marignac-Serra ECAL
CLAUDINE NOUGARET
FranceProducer, director
Claudine Nougaret is a producer and director. She started out in the film industry as a sound engineer in 1984 on Éric Rohmer’s Le Rayon vert. In 1992, together with Raymond Depardon, she founded Palmeraie et Désert to produce quality documentary films including Urgences, Délits flagrants, Afriques : comment ça va avec la douleur ?, 10e Chambre, La Vie moderne, Journal de France, Les Habitants, 12 jours (presented in 2017 at the Festival de Cannes in Official Selection – Out of Competition). In 2021, she created the CST Award for best young female film technician at the Festival de Cannes, and in 2022 produced the film Riposte féministe by Marie Perennès and Simon Depardon, a documentary about feminist collectives across France (Festival de Cannes 2022, Official Selection).
© Raymond Depardon
VLADIMIR PERIŠIĆ
SerbiaDirector, screenwriter
Graduated from the Fémis film school, Vladimir Perišić presented his graduation film, the short Dremano oko, in the Cinéfondation selection at the Festival de Cannes 2003. In 2009, he directed his first feature film Ordinary People, an intense war film he co-wrote with Alice Winocour, in competition for the Caméra d’Or at the Festival de Cannes 2009. He returned in 2014 with Bridges of Sarajevo, screened in Special Screenings, a collective work by thirteen renowned European filmmakers on the history of the Bosnian capital, for which he directed Our Shadow Will. His latest film, Lost Country (2023), is a critically acclaimed intimate political chronicle. In parallel, he has been one of the programmers of the Belgrade Auteur Film Festival since 2011.
© Philippe Lebruman
“Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking.” Antonio Machado. The Festival de Cannes is one of those paths we dream of crossing. The focus on young filmmakers presenting their short films, and the paths they have taken to get there, honor me. I can’t wait to discover the richness of it all. It’s a journey that I want to be demanding and kind, short after short, step after step. To be selected in this mythical place is a message of love, a worldwide recognition, and to preside over it is a source of pride.
LUBNA AZABAL
President of the Shorts films and La Cinef Jury
THE SHORT FILMS COMPETITION
Selected from 4 420 films, 11 shorts will be presented this year in Competition, coming from 10 countries : Azerbaijan, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, France, Kosovo, Lithuania, Portugal and the United States. The Short Film Palme d’or will be handed by the Jury chaired by Lubna Azabal, Saturday, May 25, during the closing ceremony of the 77th Festival de Cannes.
VOLCELEST by Éric Briche
France – 15′
OOTIDĖ (Ootid) by Razumaitė Eglė
Lithuania – 9′
SANKI YOXSAN by Azer Guliev
Azerbaijan – 15′
LES BELLES CICATRICES by Raphaël Jouzeau
France – 15′
RRUGËS (On The Way) by Samir Karahoda
Kosovo – 15′
ACROSS THE WATERS by Viv Li
China – 15′
PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS by Alison McAlpine
Canada – 15′
TEA by Blake Rice
United States – 12′
AMARELA (Yellow) by André Hayato Saito
Brazil – 15′
THE MAN WHO COULD NOT REMAIN SILENT by Nebojša Slijepčević
Croatia – 13′
BAD FOR A MOMENT (Mau Por Um Momento) by Daniel Soares
Portugal – 15′
LA CINEF SELECTION
For its 27th edition La Cinef has selected 18 shorts (14 live-action and 4 animated films) from among the 2,263 submitted by film schools all over the world. This year’s programme reflects the geographic mobility of film students, with a Singaporean director in Australia, an Indian and a Lithuanian in the UK, a Russian in the Czech Republic and three shorts made at American schools by Russian, Chinese and British filmmakers.
The Jury will hand over La Cinef prizes at a ceremony preceding the screening of the awarded films on Thursday 23 May in the Buñuel Theatre.
CROW MAN by Yohann Abdelnour
ALBA – Lebanon – 8′
BANISHED LOVE by Xiwen Cong
Beijing Film Academy – China – 40′
PRAEIS (IT’LL PASS) by Dovydas Drakšas
London Film School – United Kingdom – 27′
ECHOES by Robinson Drossos
ENSAD – France – 7′
MAUVAIS COTON (US AND THEM) by Nicolas Dumaret
La Fémis – France – 20′
TERMINAL by East Elliott
NYU – United States of America – 18′
ELEVACIÓN by Gabriel Esdras
Universidad de Guadalajara – Mexico – 28′
IN SPIRITO by Nicolò Folin
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Italy – 14′
THE DEER’S TOOTH by Saif Hammash
Dar Al-Kalima University – Palestine – 16′
PLEVEL (WEEDS) by Pola Kazak
FAMO – Czech Republic – 14′
THE CHAOS SHE LEFT BEHIND by Nikos Kolioukos
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – Greece – 33′
FOREST OF ECHOES by Yoori Lim
Korea National University of Arts – South Korea – 22′
BUNNYHOOD by Mansi Maheshwari
NFTS – United Kingdom – 9′
SUNFLOWERS WERE THE FIRST ONES TO KNOW… by Chidananda S Naik
FTII, Pune – India – 16′
WITHERED BLOSSOMS by Lionel Seah
AFTRS – Australia – 14′
OUT THE WINDOW THROUGH THE WALL by Asya Segalovich
Columbia University – United States of America – 22′
THREE by Amie Song
Columbia University – United States of America – 15′
IT’S NOT TIME FOR POP by Amit Vaknin
Tel Aviv University – Israel – 14′
