"Wuthering Heights" helmer to head Cannes' Critics' Week jury

PanARMENIAN.Net - British filmmaker Andrea Arnold will head this year's Nespresso Grand Prize jury for the 53rd edition of the Semaine de la Critique section during Cannes 2014, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The jury, made up of four international journalists, will pick a winner from one of the seven feature films in competition.

The winning entry will follow Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza's Salvo, winner of 2013's Nespresso Grand Prize.

Arnold's short film Milk unspooled in Critics' Week in 1998 and she has been back to the Festival de Cannes several times over the last few years and was a jury member for the event's main Competition in 2012.

"I was so excited when Milk screened in La Semaine de la Critique that I kept crashing into things. When I got home I counted 19 bruises," Arnold said. "I am just as excited about being asked to be president of the jury of the Nespresso Grand Prize for La Semaine de la Critique and I think it might be a good idea to put away the china. I see it as an adventure. I will go into it open. See what and who comes."

Arnold's short film Wasp won the Oscar for best short in 2003.

Her first two feature films, Red Road in 2003 and Fish Tank, in which she directed Michael Fassbender in 2009, won both the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2011, she presented her adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights in the Venice International Film Festival Competition.

La Semaine de la Critique aims to reward one of the emerging artists from the competition with the Nespresso Grand Prize.

For the fourth consecutive year, Nespresso supports new film talent by collaborating with the Semaine de la Critique Grand Prize that was awarded in previous years to such filmmakers as Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, 1993), Gaspar Noe (I stand alone, 1998), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros, 2000) and Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, 2011).