Italian director and actor (and Palme winner) Nanni Moretti will preside over the jury of the Cannes Film Festival 2012, the 65th edition of the event in Cannes. Why Moretti, a spirited and occasionally controversial director? “When we decided to put ‘Ecce Bombo’ – a super 8 film – into Competition when I first arrived in 1978, it was because I had a premonition that Nanni Moretti would soon become NANNI MORETTI,” said Gilles Jacob. “This is what happened”
Thierry Frémaux went further. “The Festival wanted to celebrate its 65th season with a European jury President,” explains the festival director . “High-spirited and marked by his modernity and intelligence, Nanni Moretti’s films are the incarnation of all the best in cinema over the past thirty years”.
That’s quite a claim. But it’s true that Moretti’s films have always provoked love-or-hate reactions. He applied a critical but sometimes amusing eye on Italian society through films such as the award winning “Sogni d’Oro” (Sweet Dreams) and “La Messa è finita” (The Mass is Ended). “La Stanza del figlio” (The Son’s Room) won the Palme d’Or in 2001 and was a box office hit. Moretti scored more points with the controversial “Il Caimano” (The Caiman) in 2006, a film clearly targeted at Italy’s obsession with politics as theatre, and a thinly-veiled criticism of Silvio Berlusconi.
Read more about the Cannes Film Festival.