The 79th Festival de Cannes opens Tuesday, May 12 with Pierre Salvadori's La Vénus Électrique under an eight-member jury locked Monday under Park Chan-wook — the first Korean president in the festival's 79-year history — alongside Demi Moore, Chloé Zhao, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, Diego Céspedes, Isaach De Bankolé, and Paul Laverty. [1] [2] The slate will judge 22 Competition films and award the Palme d'Or on Saturday, May 23, with honorary Palmes going to Peter Jackson and Barbra Streisand on closing night. [2]

The paper's May 7 brief on the first Korean-presided jury named the Cannes-bypasses-Hollywood-gravity register; T-4 is when the bypass becomes the running list, with a Competition light on American entries and new work from Almodóvar, Hamaguchi, Kore-eda, Farhadi, Gray, Mungiu, Nemes, Pawlikowski, Mysius, and Sachs. [3]

The structural read carries from May 7: Park's gavel and a Streisand-Jackson honorary slate together mark the festival's clearest non-American year since the early 2000s, in an Iran-war year one Palme removed from Panahi's win.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles