Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh will serve as the jury president at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
Panh will head the festival’s Concorso Internazionale jury, which hands out the top Pardo d’Oro (Golden Leopard) prize.
“Rithy Panh is widely regarded as a key figure in twentieth-century cinema. His gaze has reinvented the forms of contemporary filmmaking, creating a historiography in images that has exerted an incalculable influence on countless film directors,” Locarno head Giona A. Nazzaro said in a statement.
“As an authoritative witness of our time, his passionate search for truth, his anti-dogmatic approach, and his genuine commitment, as well as his capacity to move freely between the numerous forms of present-day film-making were the crucial elements that prompted us, spontaneously and enthusiastically, to offer him the task of President of the Jury of the Concorso Internazionale at the 78th Locarno Film Festival.”
Nazzaro continued to describe Panh’s artistic practice as prolific and inexhaustible.
“Mr. Rithy Panh is the ideal figure to whom we can entrust those films, thus preparing them for the encounter with audiences from all over the world,” Nazzaro added.
Panh said that he hopes to highlight films that celebrate a diversity of cultures and stories.
“I am convinced that the diversity of viewpoints and narrative experiences enriches our understanding of the world,” he said.
This year’s Locarno Film Festival runs from August 6-16.
The post Rithy Panh To Serve As Locarno Jury President appeared first on Deadline.
