By Bee Garner

The Cannes Film Festival will be running from 12th May to 23rd May and the selection committee has been unveiled. Last year, the festival revealed its committee for the first time which included four women, three of whom return this year.  This year’s committee now includes five women which we will list below:

• Virginie Apiou: A journalist who has also directed TV documentaries about Cinema (CANAL+, Warner, TCM) focusing on the work of Alfred Hitchcock, these documentaries are called “A Look at Dial M for Murder” and “North by Northwest by Northwest” and definitely something we’re going to add to our to watch list.
• Stéphanie Lamome: A  journalist, reporter, critic, as well as being the head of department and then deputy editor-in-chief of Première magazine. She was an on-air programmer for Radio Festival, the official radio of the Festival de Cannes, between 2017 and 2019.
• Johanna Nahon: A Script doctor and as well as a producer, Johanna Nahon began working in production under Charles Gillibert in 2015. She then joined the film production and international sales company Celluloid Dreams, where she headed up the purchasing department from 2016 to 2018.
  
• Guillemette Odicino: A Journalist, critic and the head of the Cinema department at Télérama. Odicino regularly contributes to the programme “Le Cercle”, broadcast on CANAL+ and CANAL+ Cinéma.
  
• Caroline Veunac: Since graduating from the Centre de Formation des Journalistes, Veunac has written film reviews for the magazine Cinéastes, before going on to work on a number of magazine titles. From 2016 to 2017, she was editor-in-chief of the TV show Plus de Séries, on CANAL+ Séries and is now a regular contributor to the film and TV website Somewhere Else.

On top of having a gender-balanced selection committee, in recent years the Cannes Film Festival has also had juries boasting as many women as men since Thierry Fremaux became the festival’s General Delegate. In regards to the official selection, last year’s Cannes competition showed significant improvement on previous editions with four movies directed by women, three of which took home prizes: Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire” ( which won the screenplay award), Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” (which won the Grand Prize), and Jessica Hausner’s “Little Joe” (which won best actress).

It’ll be interesting to see which female-directed films will feature in 2020’s Cannes competition line-up and which filmmakers will walk away with the top prizes. Watch this space!