Bollywood actress Vidya Balan has been named as one of the jury members of the prestigious 66th Cannes Film Festival's.
Vidya Balan is elated and said that being on jury of Cannes Film Festival is a great honor.
“It feels great. It's a big honor for me to be on the jury of the most celebrated film festival in the world,” said Vidya Balan to IANS.
“Especially this year when Indian cinema completes 100 years, it becomes more special. I am looking forward to it,” the actress added.
When asked if Vidya Balan will be partial towards Indian Cinema, the actress said, “We are churning out better movies by the day, so we definitely deserve to be competing with films from all over the world. There is no scope for partiality and our films don't need any of us to be partial, I think we deserve to be up there.”
The nine member jury is headed by Hollywood director Steven Spielberg. The jury also includes Academy Award winning director Ang Lee, Academy Award winning actress Nicole Kidman, Japanese director Naomi Kawase, British scriptwriter-director-producer Lynne Ramsay, French actor-director Daniel Auteuil, Romanian scriptwriter-director-producer Cristian Mungiu and Austrian actor Christopher Waltz.
The Film Festival will kick start on May 15th with the screening of The Great Gatsby, which will be attended by Bollywood Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who plays a crucial cameo in the movie.
The film festival has invited Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, a regular at Cannes' red carpet.
This year Cannes Film Festival will screen four Indian movies.
‘Bombay Talkies’, an anthology film by four directors --Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar -- will have a gala screening at the festival.
Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Ugly’ will be screened on Directors' Fortnight sidebar, where he earlier showcased his two-part revenge drama ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’.
‘Dabba’ (Lunchbox) and ‘Monsoon Shootout’, co-produced by Anurag Kashyap, have been selected for Cannes Critics Week and Midnight Screening sections respectively.
Director Shekhar Kapur and actress Sharmila Tagore have previously been a part of Cannes jury.