US Film director, Spike Lee will head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in July, organisers said Tuesday, making him the first black person to take on the role.
The American film-maker was supposed to perform the function at last year’s event, but it was cancelled due to the pandemic. With Covid-19 still circulating at high levels in France, and the country making slow progress in its vaccination campaign, doubts remain over whether this year’s edition will go ahead as planned from July 6 to 17, having already been delayed from its usual slot in May.
Lee, 63, has been a fixture at Cannes over the years, premiering seven of his films there and winning the second-place Grand Prix in 2018 for “BlacKkKlansman” about a black police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan.
“Throughout the months of uncertainty we’ve just been through, Spike Lee has never stopped encouraging us,” said festival president Pierre Lescure in a statement.
“We could not have hoped for a more powerful personality to chart our troubled times.”
With a back-catalogue that has thrown a spotlight on issues of race and politics in the US, Lee was seen as a symbolic choice at a time when the French film industry has been mired in controversies over the representation of minorities.
The Cannes jury, which selects the winner of the coveted Palme d’Or, has rarely displayed much diversity in the president’s chair. Lee has tried his hand at many genres but is best known for films that put the African-American experience front and centre. Those have ranged from slice-of-life classics such as “Do the Right Thing” to more overtly political works such as “Malcolm X” and his most recent Netflix hit “Da 5 Bloods” about black veterans from the Vietnam war.
Lee exploded on to the film scene at Cannes in 1986 with “She’s Gotta Have It”, which took home the Youth Award. The official selection for this year’s festival, along with the rest of the jury is due to be named in early June.