Bollywood star Deepika Padukone set to join Cannes Film Festival 2022 jury

Deepika Padukone, one of India’s biggest stars, will join this year’s main jury at the Cannes Film Festival, slated to run from May 17 to 28, reported The National.

Padukone will join veteran French actor Vincent Lindon as chairman of the jury, along with British actress and director Rebecca Hall; Swedish actress Noomi Rapace; Italian actress and director Jasmine Trinca; Iranian director Asghar Farhadi; French director Ladj Ly; American director Jeff Nichols; and Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

The group will help pick winners of the 21 films in competition this year, including the one that will be awarded the coveted Palme d’Or.

Padukone, who appeared in the acclaimed film Gehraiyaan, has been attending the festival since 2010 as L’Oreal ambassador. Lindon co-starred in last year’s Palme d’Or winner Titane, directed by Julia Ducournau.

Lindon said he was “extremely proud to be given, amid the upheaval of the many events we are going through in the world, the splendid and heavy task of presiding the jury”.

Canadian director David Cronenberg, US filmmaker James Gray and France’s Claire Denis are among the competitors for the Palme d’Or this year.

Amongst the stars slated to walk the red carpet are Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen, who starred in Cronenberg’s sci-fi/horror crossover Crimes of the Future.

Denis will be debuting a thriller set in Central America -The Stars at Noon - featuring Taron Egerton and Robert Pattinson.

Gray’s entry, Armageddon Time, is an autobiographical story based on his New York adolescence, featuring Anne Hathaway, Oscar Isaac, Cate Blanchett and Anthony Hopkins.

Tom Cruise will attend the much-awaited world premiere of Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to his 1986 blockbuster, Top Gun.

Tom Hanks will be in town to lend support to Elvis, in which he co-stars as the rock ‘n’ roll star’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, in the latest film by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, who has previously brought Moulin Rouge! and Gatsby to Cannes.

On announcing this year’s line-up earlier in April, festival director Thierry Fremaux had already acknowledged the global situation, saying the announcement came “after two years of crisis that we won’t recover from quickly, and at a time of sadness and war in Europe.”

A Ukrainian film will play outside of the competition-The Natural History of Destruction - from director Sergei Loznitsa about the destruction of German cities by Allied bombers in the Second World War.