Spanish director Isabel Coixet (The Bookshop, My Life Without Me) will head up the competition jury for the Orizzonti, or Horizons, section of this year’s Venice International Film festival, organizers unveiled on Wednesday.
The Secret Life of Words helmer will be joined by Italian director Laura Bispuri (Sworn Virgin, Daughter of Mine); American filmmaker Antonio Campos (The Staircase, The Devil All the Time); Algerian director Sofia Djama, whose feature debut, The Blessed, screened in Oizzonti last year, winning the best actress honor for star Lyna Khoudri; and French journalist and critic Edouard Waintrop, who most recently was artistic director at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight section.
The Orizzonti jury will present awards for best film, best director, a jury prize, best actor and actress, best screenplay and a best short film honor, picking from the titles selected for the Venice sidebar this year.
Venice also unveiled the jury for the Luigi de Laurentiis award for the best debut film. Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino (The Gift, The Four Times) will head up the jury as president, and he will be joined by Thor: Love and Thunder star Tessa Thompson; Polish director Jan P. Matuszynski (Deep Love); Portuguese director Ana Rocha de Sousa (Listen); and French costume designer Rosalie Varda (Visages villages, One Hundred and One Nights).
The debut film jury will pick the best first feature screening across all of Venice’s competition sections, including the main competition and various sidebars. The winner of the Luigi De Laurentiis “Lion of the Future” award will receive a cash prize of $102,000 (€100,000) to be divided equally between the film’s director and producer.
The 79th Venice Film Festival will announce its official lineup on Tuesday. The 2022 Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 31-Sept. 10.