Spike Lee will be first black person to lead Cannes Film Festival jury
Cannes president Pierre Lescure as well as festival director Thierry Frémaux write that Spike Lee’s perspective is “more valuable than ever” one day after the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences drew criticism for nominating mostly white stars in the acting categories at the 2020 Oscars. (Image Courtesy: NBC News).
This year, Spike Lee will become the first black person in the Cannes Film Festival’s seventy-three-year history to serve as jury president, succeeding Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose 2019 jury of artists awarded Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) the Palme d’Or, according to NBC News. The sixty-two-year-old filmmaker’s feature debut, She’s Gotta Have It (1986), won the Prix de la Jeunesse in the Director’s Fortnight at that year’s Cannes, and his most recent offering, BlacKkKlansman (2018), took home the Cannes Grand Prix. The festival will take place May 12 through the 23, and the rest of Lee’s jury will be announced in mid-April.
I am an award-winning journalist, memoirist, and personal essayist in Denver, Colorado. I hold a Master of Arts in Professional Creative Writing with a concentration in Nonfiction from the University of Denver, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Communication from Colorado State University Fort Collins, with a concentration in Publications Writing, Editing, and Production, and an interdisciplinary minor in Film Studies. I am passionate about inspiring positive change and meaningful action through the power of the literary arts.
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Hunter Goddard 