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VENICE 2016 Jury

Sam Mendes to chair the Venice jury

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- The British director, who was behind such titles as American Beauty and Spectre, will head the International Jury of the Competition at the 73rd Venice Film Festival (31 August-10 September 2016)

Sam Mendes to chair the Venice jury
Director Sam Mendes

British director Sam Mendes will chair the International Jury of the Competition at the 73rd Venice Film Festival (31 August-10 September 2016), which will hand out the Golden Lion for Best Film in addition to the other official prizes. 

Sam Mendes, who debuted in 1988 as a theatrical director, has made a name for himself as one of the most highly respected film directors of the last few years. With his directorial debut, American Beauty (2000), he won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Film. He then went on to direct Road to Perdition, which was presented in Competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2002. Since then, Mendes has alternately continued to be a regular on London’s stages and on the sets of Hollywood films, all the way up to the extraordinary global success of the 23rd James Bond movie, Skyfall [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
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]
, confirmed by the next title in the series, Spectre [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile
]
. Other films he has directed include Jarhead, Away We Go [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 and Revolutionary Road [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]

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“Mendes’ work is a particularly effective and convincing synthesis of a vocation for distinctive theatre and cinema,” stated Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera, “combined with research into methods of communication with increasingly large numbers of spectators. His productions, whether destined for stage or screen, are able to reconcile the expectations of the most exacting critics with the tastes of a vast audience which seems to transcend all geographical and cultural boundaries.”

“I’m very honoured to have been asked by Alberto to lead the International Jury for Venezia 73,” declared Mendes. “I’ve always had a strong personal connection with Venice; as a student, I worked for three months at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection way back in 1984, and my happiest film-festival memory is launching Road to Perdition at Venice in 2002. I am thoroughly delighted to be coming back to the Lido this year and welcoming a wealth of international filmmaking talent.”

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(Translated from Italian)

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