The 75th Festival de Cannes Short Film Jury

The Jury

Yousry Nasrallah – President
Director
Egypt

Monia Chokri
Actress & director
Canada

Laura Wandel
Director & screenwriter
Belgium

Félix Moati
Actor & director
France

Jean-Claude Raspiengeas
Journalist & Film critic
France

 

Yousry Nasrallah 
Director
Egypt

Egyptian filmmaker Yousry Nasrallah studied economics and political sciences at Cairo University and went on to become a film critic and assistant director in Beirut. Upon returning to Cairo in 1982, he worked with Youssef Chahine on Bonaparte in Egypt, with production company Misr International Films going on to produce his first films. He shot his first feature film Summer Thefts (Directors’ Fortnight) in 1988, following up with The Mercedes (1993) which was selected at the Locarno Film Festival, On Boys, Girls and the Veil (1995), a documentary about Egypt’s young people, and The City (1999), which was awarded Locarno’s Special Jury Prize. His eponymous book-to-screen adaptation of Elias Khoury’s novel The Gate of Sun was in the Festival de Cannes’ Official Selection in 2004. He went on to film The Aquarium (2008) and Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story (2009) which was screened at the Venice Film Festival. In 2011, his Interior/Exterior was included in 18 Days, an anthology of shorts screened at the Festival de Cannes in honour of Egypt. The following year he was back in the Official Selection, in Competition with After the Battle. His last film Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces was presented in Official Competition at the Locarno Film Festival in 2016.

—

Monia Chokri 
Actress & director
Canada

Quebec native Monia Chokri is a trained actress who graduated from the Conservatoire d’art dramatique in Montreal. She began her career as a stage actress before meeting Xavier Dolan, with whom she filmed Heartbeats (selected for Un Certain Regard 2010) and Laurence Anyways (selected for Un Certain Regard 2012). Alongside her work as an actress, she shot her first short in 2013 with An Extraordinary Person, winning the Junior Jury Award for best international short at the 66th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. In 2019, she was back in Cannes with her first feature film, A Brother’s Love, which scooped the Un Certain Regard Jury’s Coup de cœur Award. In 2022, she is presenting her second feature film as a director with Babysitter, which was selected in the Sundance Film Festival’s Midnight category.

—

Laura Wandel
Director & screenwriter
Belgium

Belgian director and screenwriter Laura Wandel trained at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD) before going on to work on several sets as a studio manager, wardrobe manager and set designer. In 2010, she co-directed O Negative with Gaëtan D’Agostino followed by her solo début Foreign Bodies selected in Competition in the Festival de Cannes’ Short Films category in 2014. In 2021, she returned to Cannes with her first feature film Playground, which was part of the Un Certain Regard Official Selection and won the FIPRESCI Award. One of 15 films to be pre-selected for the Academy Award Best International Feature Film title, Playground won in seven categories at Belgium’s Magritte Awards. Laura Wandel is currently working on her second feature film, developed within La Résidence of the Festival de Cannes.

—

Félix Moati
Actor & director
France

Actor and director Félix Moati made his début in Lisa Azuelos’ LOL followed by Pirate TV by Michel Leclerc – winning him his first nomination for the César Award for Most Promising Actor –, Nice and Easy by Benjamin Guedj, Hippocrates by Thomas Lilti and Jérôme Bonnell’s All About Them. In 2016, his first short Après Suzanne was In Competition in the Festival de Cannes’ Short Films category. He pursued his acting career in France in Sou Abadi’s Some Like It Veiled and Sink or Swim by Gilles Lellouche (presented Out of Competition in 2018), and abroad with Resistance by Jonathan Jakubowicz and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. Alongside this, he released his first feature film, Father and Sons, to universal acclaim. With a starring role in Fabien Gorgeart’s The Family in 2022, Félix Moati will soon be back on the silver screen again in Not My Type by Michel Leclerc.

—

Jean-Claude Raspiengeas
Journalist & Film critic
France

Jean-Claude Raspiengeas is a leading culture reporter for the newspaper La Croix and a columnist for Le Masque et la Plume on France Inter radio. He has written several books, including Bertrand Tavernier (2001, Flammarion), Routiers (2020, L’Iconoclaste) and Une vie sur l’eau – Le monde des bateliers (2022, L’Iconoclaste), as well as the documentaries Privés de télé(1986) and Paroles d’otages (Fipa d’or, 1989), which he co-directed with Patrick Volson. Jean-Claude Raspiengeas co-authored Ces Années-là, a book published on the occasion of the 70th Festival de Cannes (2017, Stock).