French actress Isabelle Huppert, best known for her role as a sado-masochist in “The Piano Teacher”, will lead the jury at this year’s Venice Film Festival, organizers announced Wednesday. The 81st edition of the prestigious festival will take place from August 28 through September 7 on the beach-lined Lido island.

“There is a long and beautiful history between the Festival and I,” said Huppert, who has won Venice’s Coppa Volpi for best actress twice, for Claude Chabrol’s “Story of Women” and “La Ceremonie”, in 1988 and 1995 respectively. “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,” the 71-year-old said.

Last year, the festival’s top Golden Lion prize went to Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things”, a feminist reworking of Frankenstein. The 2023 jury was led by US director Damien Chazelle, best known for the Oscar-winning “La La Land”. — AFP