Ruben Östlund to preside over 76th Cannes Film Festival jury

It will also be the first time ever that a Palme d’or winner becomes President of the Cannes Jury the year after receiving the coveted award.

Östlund won last year’s Palme d’or for his satire Triangle of Sadness, five years after scooping the top Cannes award for The Square.

By inviting Östlund to preside over the Jury, the Cannes Film Festival said they wished “to pay tribute to films that are uncompromising and forthright and which constantly demand that viewers challenge themselves and that art continue to invent itself."

"I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honour of Jury president for year's year’s Competition at the Festival de Cannes,” said Öslund in a statement. “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.”

The director’s vehement defence of the silver screen was most recently displayed at the last Göteborg Film Festival where Östlund-named Honorary President- ‘directed’ the audience at the live This is Cinema’ event.

The 48-year-old director and former Gothenburg Valand Academy film graduate, has a long history with Cannes.

He attended the Un Certain Regard sidebar in 2008 with Involuntary, the Directors’ Fortnight in 2011 with Play, then again Un Certain Regard in 2014 with Force Majeure which grabbed the section’s Jury Prize. The darkly humorous drama set in a ski resort was his first feature mixing broad entertainment and a thought-provoking topic - here masculinity and gender role structure in a family as a couple disintegrates in the wake of an avalanche.

His following film - the Cannes Palme d’or winner The Square (2017) set in the art world had one shocking and uncomfortable scene at a dinner party where a half-naked man acting like an ape jumps on the tables and intimidates the bourgeois art benefactors.

Meanwhile Östlund’s satire of the uber-rich Triangle of Sadness, had what he pinned as ‘the wildest scene in film history’ (see our story - Östlund’s new film will feature ‘the wildest scene in film history’ - CLICK HERE), where during 15 minutes, vomit, diarrhoea and raw sewage cover guests on a yacht during a raging storm.

Triangle of Sadness which has triumphed at the local Guldbagge awards and European Film Awards, is now vying for Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the 95^th Academy Awards, to be handed out March 12 in Los Angeles.

All Östlund’s films are produced by his long-time partner Erik Hemmendorff for Plattform Produktion. The latter who met Östlund at film school, explained for us the ‘Ruben touch’ and how they collaborate (read our interview Triangle of Sadness' producer on working with Ruben Östlund and challenging conventions - CLICK HERE.

Hemmendorff said Östlund’s films are meant "for people to have something to discuss after coming out of a cinema. Ruben’s films are the opposite to popcorn movies, pure escapism. They are about the world we live in. Our reality. But it can be made in a provocative and entertaining way,” he underscored.

The last Nordic talent who presided over the jury of the main competition in Cannes was Norwegian actor/director Liv Ullmann. Before her, the honour was bestowed upon Swedish star actor Ingrid Bergman in 1973.

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival will run May 16-27.

To read our other interview with Ruben Östlund - Ruben Östlund on Triangle of Sadness, fashion, social hierarchy and Woody Harrelson - CLICK HERE.