Gender parity and multiculturalism are on the program at this year’s Cannes Festival. Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux have done their homework and they’ve taken the temperature. Quite right!

This year’s program, which we reported on on April 18th after attending the press conference here in Paris, is gleaming with talent and may even earn the Cannes Festival a Nobel Peace Prize, with women filmmakers better represented than ever before (four women directors make up this year’s slate). In all, our here jury includes four women and four men, hailing from four continents and seven different nationalities, not least of which, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and actress Elle Fanning.

Other well-knowns include Alice Rohrwacher, whose “Felice Lazzaro” last year marked many, Yorgos Lanthimos (now part of the furniture at Cannes) and Pawel Pawlikowski, whose film “Cold War” will probably remain with me until my last dying day. A more unusual choice of a jury member is that of Enki Bilal, a graphic artist known to anyone who’s either grown up in France, like me, or who knows graphic novels. Bilal is the godfather of graphic novels. He made urban decay cool and gave us throughout his career, striking insights into a dystopian future.

Bilal, along with Reichardt, Fanning and the others will spend their time in Cannes watching every film, huddling in their villa to debate a film’s merits, or lack thereof, eat meals prepared by a chef, sleep in marvelous quarters, drink a lot of coffee and S. Pellegrino, presumably, and hand down the awards, finally, during a closing ceremony on May 25th.

The 2019 Cannes Festival jury members are: