French actress Isabelle Huppert (Elle, The Piano Teacher, La Cérémonie) will be the president of the International Jury of the Competition at the 81st Venice International Film Festival (August 28 – September 7). In accepting the proposal, Isabelle Huppert said: “There is a long and beautiful history between the Festival and I. Becoming a privileged spectator is an honor. More than ever, cinema is a promise. The promise to escape, to disrupt, to surprise, to take a good look at the world, united in the differences of our tastes and ideas”.

Isabelle Huppert developed an interest in acting as a teenager and entered the Versailles Conservatory. She won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978 for Violette by Claude Chabrol. In 2022 she was appointed as the recipient of the Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Her workmates will be James Gray, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Abderrahmane Sissako, Giuseppe Tornatore, Julia von Heinz and Zhang Ziyi.