The Coen brothers, the award-winning American directors of “No Country for Old Men”, “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski”, are to jointly head this year’s Cannes Film Festival jury, the organisers announced Tuesday.
Joel and Ethan Coen will be co-presidents of the panel of filmmakers and actors who will judge the 20-or-so films in the main competition event of the festival, which will run May 13-24, according to a statement.
“We are very happy to be coming back to Cannes,” the brothers were quoted as saying in the organisers’ statement, which was in French.
The two directors added they were “especially happy at the opportunity being given to us to see films from around the entire world”. They stressed that Cannes “has always played an important role for us”, since the beginning of their careers.
“Being presidents of the jury this year is even more of an honour in that we’ve never been presidents of anything before.”
It is the first time the Cannes jury will be jointly headed by two people.
