One year after his film Mad Max: Fury Road opened at the Cannes Film Festival, George Miller is set to return to the Croisette, this time, as the festival’s President of the Jury. The choice may seem odd for an institution championing the kind of cinema mostly related to ‘auteurs’, rather than the action-packed series of blockbusters that the Greek Australian filmmaker is famous for, but Miller is not one to fall into a convenient category.
Apart from becoming a rapid world-wide box office hit, earning more than $375 million, Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the rare action films to gain critical acclaim; it is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, not least among them Best Picture and Best Director for Miller (who has previously won an Oscar for best animated feature for Happy Feet in 2006, and received nominations for producing and writing Babe in 1995 and for writing Lorenzo’s Oil in 1992)
In a statement explaining their decision as “a celebration of genre cinema”, Cannes organisers called Miller a “visionary” filmmaker, who “has constantly experimented with a variety of genres, brilliantly reconciling mass audience expectations and the highest artistic standards.”
Miller himself expressed his enthusiasm to be the first Australian to preside over the event, the most prestigious in the world of international cinema.
“What an unmitigated delight,” he said in his statement release. “To be there in the middle of this storied festival at the unveiling of cinematic treasures from all over the planet. To spend time in passionate discourse with fellow members of the jury. Such an honour. I’ll be there with bells on.”
Following after Joel and Ethan Coen, Jane Campion and Steven Spielberg, who presided over the festival in 2015, 2014 and 2013 respectively, Miller is not new to Cannes, having served on two previous juries – in 1999 under president David Cronenberg, when the top prize went to the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta, and in 1988, under the recently-deceased Italian master Ettore Scola, when the Palme d’Or went to Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror.
The 69th Cannes Film Festival will take place at the French Riviera resort from 11 to 22 May. Its official line-up and the other jury members will be announced in April.