‘Saint Laurent’ director Bertrand Bonello to chair 2018 Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation, Short Films Jury

For the 71st edition of the Festival de Cannes, which will run May 8-19, 2018, Bertrand Bonello will chair the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury. The French filmmaker will succeed Romanian director Cristian Mungui.

From his very first film “Something Organic” in 1998 to “Nocturama” in 2016, Bonello has occupied a unique place in the cinematographic landscape. His filmography includes seven feature films and eight short films, all of them highly distinctive.

Since 2003, Bonello’s films have been screened in Competition at the Festival de Cannes including “Tiresia” in 2003, “House of Tolerance” in 2011 and “Saint Laurent” in 2014. “Saint Laurent” is a biopic starring Gaspard Ulliel as the late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

Sexual identity and the relationship to the body haunt Bonello’s work whether in his portrait of a Brazilian transsexual, the refined but frosty everyday life of a brothel at the close of the nineteenth century, or a virtuoso biopic about creation and the pain it causes. In his exploration of the troubled margins of our thoughts and desires, he ceaselessly questions the boundaries of reality.

Trained as a classical musician, this self-taught artisan works in music and cinema, sound and images, writes the script and composes the music for all his films and his critically acclaimed works reveal an acute mastery of audacity and aesthetics. He prefers perception over traditional narrative, long shots that emphasize the sensoriality of imagery.

Bonello’s worlds that conjure up visual and sound experiences that break free of all limits and as an admirer of Bresson, Pasolini and Jarmusch, fan of the Godfather and eXistenZ, he seems to gravitate instinctively towards recurrent obsessions. This passionate artist will therefore set an ambitious standard for the young generation of directors in the 2018 Cinéfondation and Short Films selection.

“This year will be presided by one of the greatest contemporary directors, an iconoclastic and unique artist,” Cannes Film Festival Honorary President Gilles Jacob says of Bonello. “And besides his art, his genuine humanity continues to shine to this day.”