#Damien Chazelle Named Venice Film Festival Jury President

La La Land, Babylon, and Whiplash director Damien Chazelle will head up the international jury for the 80th Venice International Film Festival, Venice unveiled on Friday.

A regular on the Lido, Chazelle premiered both La La Land and the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man in competition in Venice.

“For 10 days each year this city of the arts, of Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese, becomes a city of cinema, and I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead this year’s jury,” Chazelle said in a statement. “I can’t wait to discover a new crop of great films at the 80th Venice Film Festival.”

French director Alice Diop (Saint Omer, We) will head up the Luigi De Laurentiis jury judging the best first film at this year’s festival, while Italy’s Jonas Carpignano (A Chiara, A Ciambra), will be president of the jury for Venice’s main sidebar, the Orizzonti (Horizons) section. Saint Omer, Diop’s fiction film debut, won the Luigi De Laurentiis prize in Venice last year. The searing courtroom drama also won her the Silver Lion grand jury prize.

Diop said it was “a great honor [and] a great joy,” to have been picked to preside over the debut film jury. “I am happy to pass on the baton this year and to work to see a new voice emerge in the cinematic landscape that the Venice Festival has always had at sought to renew.”

Carpignano has presented most of his films at Cannes, including Mediterranea, which screened at Critics’ Week, and A Chiara, a Directors’ Fortnight entry. In accepting his role as president of the Orizzonti jury, he said he was ” very grateful to the Venice Film Festival for this privilege. Year after year the rich and bold selection of Orizzonti offers us a deep immersion in the world of cinema. I can’t wait to live the emotions and to experience the diverse realities we will come to know in the theatres on the Lido. To have the opportunity to see some of the finest films of the year in one of the most beautiful places in the world is something truly special.”

The 80th Venice International Film Festival runs Aug. 30-Sept. 9.