French screen icon Isabelle Huppert, president of the 81st Venice Film Festival‘s main competition jury, took the stage Wednesday afternoon to share her thoughts on how she will approach her role as the event’s de facto artistic judge-in-chief. The gathering was marked by a triumphant tone from Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera, who sat by Huppert’s side and noted that his glamorous Italian festival will feature more big-name stars on its red carpet over the coming week than in any year of recent memory. But there was also a palpable undercurrent of angst over the myriad tech-driven business challenges that continue to roil the global independent film business.
“I’m worried about the things everyone is worried about — whether cinema can continue to survive — because it’s very weak now,” Huppert remarked early in the sitdown. “It’s very difficult to make a film. A film is not just an individual effort. It’s really something we deliver to the world. So I am concerned about whether our world will still connect with people. That’s why the Venice Film Festival is necessary. And that’s why I’m so happy to be here.”
U.S. director Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone), serving as head of the jury for Venice’s Horizons section this year, thanked Huppert for addressing the “elephant in the room.”
“That’s why we all showed up here because we want to see this art form survive,” Granik said. The filmmaker emphasized the value of film festivals like Venice in encouraging artists to “continue telling the stories that aren’t covered in the mainstream.”
“Festivals are now maybe acts of defiance — going against the grain,” Granik added, turnign to Barbera. “This festival has 80 years of solidity — and mobility. It doesn’t get old and you don’t get stale.”
Huppert also emphasized how “honored and moved’ she was to oversee this year’s competition jury, noting her many “wonderful memories” in Venice across the expanse of her historic screen career.
“By definition, juries are subjective,” she added. “That’s what juries do; that’s why they are so beautiful. The subjectivity means we have made choices, and choosing also means relinquishing. All of the films will be watched deeply from this angle — and that’s an award in itself for these filmmakers.”
Serving alongside Huppert on the jury are American director and screenwriter James Gray (Ad Astra), British director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh, Polish director, screenwriter, and producer Agnieszka Holland, Brazilian director-screenwriter Kleber Mendonça Filho, Mauritanian director, screenwriter and producer Abderrahmane Sissako, Italian director-screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore, German director-screenwriter Julia von Heinz and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.
The 81st Venice Film Festival opens Wednesday night with the out-of-competition world premiere of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and it will wrap up on Sept. 7 when the prestigious Golden Lion for best film and other awards are revealed during the festival’s closing ceremony.
