17/05/2006

The official competition jury of the 59th Cannes Film Festival took its first steps this afternoon before the international press. Led by their Hong Kong president Wong Kar-Wai, the 2006 jury members have promised not to produce a compromise winner that would favour the more "tepid" films.

"I hope that the angels will be looking down on us!" said Wong Kar-Wai, hoping for "an outright winner" and emphasising that the jury’s objective "is to be in love with the films screened, to the point of interacting with them, being moved and overwhelmed by them. We have to bring some fresh air to world cinema, regardless of the origin of the film or the director’s age."

This year’s official competition jury is made up of actresses Helena Bonham Carter (UK), Monica Bellucci (Italy) and Zhang Ziyi (China), actors Tim Roth (UK) and Samuel L. Jackson (US), France's Patrice Leconte, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman and Argentinean filmmaker Lucrecia Martel.

After The Da Vinci Code, which was greeted with enthusiasm at press screenings, the competition will kick off for journalists this evening with Chinese director Lou Ye’s Summer Palace, a French co-production from Rosem Film (Sylvain Bursztejn) that is being sold by Wild Bunch.

(Translated from French)