The 79th Festival de Cannes opens on Tuesday, May 12 with Pierre Salvadori's La Vénus Électrique (The Electric Kiss). [1] Park Chan-wook chairs the main competition jury — the first Korean to do so in the festival's 79-year history, and the first Asian since Hong Kong's Wong Kar-wai in 2006. [2]

The paper's May 6 standard on the auteur-counterweight opening named the frame. T-5 is when the festival actually starts running it.

The full jury, announced May 4: Demi Moore, Chloé Zhao, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, Isaach De Bankolé, Diego Céspedes, Laura Wandel, and Paul Laverty. [3] Honorary Palmes go to Peter Jackson and Barbra Streisand on closing night, May 23. The Competition slate runs 22 films and is light on American entries, with new work from Almodóvar, Hamaguchi, Kore-eda, Farhadi, Gray, Mungiu, Nemes, Pawlikowski, Mysius, and Sachs. [3]

Park's path to the chair is its own argument. Oldboy took the Grand Prix in 2004; Thirst the Jury Prize in 2009; Decision to Leave Best Director in 2022. [2] The Korean industry — which won its only Palme d'Or with Bong Joon Ho's Parasite in 2019 — now decides who gets the prize on Saturday, May 23, at the Lumière.

The structural read is that the festival's jury seat has migrated east, and the question for the 22 films in Competition is which directors Park values when he is no longer the one making them.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles