Actors Demi Moore, Ruth Negga and Stellan Skarsgaard and Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao are among the eight members named to the main competition jury at the 79th Cannes Film Festival.The jury, which will be headed by South Korean auteur Park Chan wook, will oversee the 22-film In Competition lineup at this year’s festival, which runs May 12 to 23 on the French Riviera.Also on the jury are veteran screenwriter Paul Laverty, Ivorian-American actor Isaach De Bankole, Chilean director Diego Cespedes and Belgian director Laura Wandel, a press release said.Moore recently earned Golden Globe, SAG and Critics Choice wins for her performance in Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror film “The Substance”, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes 2024.Negga received an Academy Award nomination for Jeff Nichols’ “Loving”, which competed at Cannes in 2016, and has since earned Emmy and Tony nominations for her stage and television work.Skarsgaard starred in Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value”, which won the Grand Prix at the 2025 festival, and was himself nominated for the prize.Zhao, who won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for “Nomadland” (2021), received a second Best Director nomination this year for “Hamnet”, making her only the second woman in Oscar history to earn two such nominations.She first came to Cannes with her debut feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in 2015.Cespedes won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2025 festival for his debut feature “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo”, while Wandel’s first feature “Playground” won the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes 2021 in the Un Certain Regard section.Laverty, a longtime collaborator of British director Ken Loach, wrote the screenplays for two Palme d’Or winners “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (2006) and “I, Daniel Blake” (2016). He has written 14 films for Loach, 11 of which have played in Cannes competition. DeadlinePark Chan-wook, the celebrated South Korean filmmaker behind “Oldboy”, “The Handmaiden” and “Decision to Leave”, was announced as jury president in February.Park is the first Korean filmmaker to head the Cannes jury, having previously won the Grand Prix for “Oldboy” in 2004, the Jury Prize for “Thirst” in 2009 and the best director award for “Decision to Leave” in 2022. VarietyThe jury will announce the Palme d’Or and other winners at the closing ceremony on May 23 at the Grand Theater Lumiere.
