Juliette Binoche to head Beijing film festival jury

It was announced on Thursday that renowned French filmmaker Juliette Binoche will serve as jury president for the Tiantan Award at the 16^th Beijing International Film Festival (BIFF).

The other six jury members for the festival’s top award are Chinese director Bi Gan, Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung, Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro, British composer Simon Franglen, and Chinese actors Zhang Xiaofei and Zhang Yi.

According to organizers, a total of 1,826 film submissions from 139 countries have been submitted for this year’s Tiantan Award.

Among the first batch of 12 shortlisted films competing for the 10 festival awards are four Chinese films: crime dramas The Embersand All The Good Eyes, comedy drama Being Toward Death and romance comedy Crossing A Dawn.

There will be 800 screenings of 260 outstanding Chinese and foreign films during the festival, including a retrospective of 12 works starring or directed by Binoche. The screenings will take place at various cinemas in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

In addition to film screenings and the award ceremony, many other events, including a red carpet opening ceremony, industry forums, a college student film festival, and Beijing Film & Life Festival, will be held during the BIFF, which runs from April 16 to 25.

The Hundred Flowers Awards, a top film honor conferred every two years based on public voting, will be held in Beijing later this year, making the capital the only city in China to date to hold two major film events in a single year.