The Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf is the president of the jury for the 2017 edition of Venice Days. Her illustrious predecessors include Argentina's Diego Lerman, Palme-d'Or winner Laurent Cantet and Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce.
Makhmalbaf will be at the helm of the 14th Venice Days, composed of twenty-eight young jury members from twenty-eight different European countries, which would award a top prize of €20,000 to the winning film.
All first works in the strand are eligible for Venice’s Lion of the Future prize for best first work across all the Venice festival sections. This year there will be fifteen girls and thirteen boys, including a representative of the UK, Douglas Greenwood from Scotland under her supervision.
Samira Makhmalbaf, who has won the Jury Prize at Cannes twice, once with Blackboards and once with At Five in the Afternoon, is the first woman to chair the Venice Days jury.
Prior to this Makhmalbaf has been in the jury of some prestigious film festival like Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Moscow… as well as heading the jury at some other festivals including Montreal in Canada and Göteborg in Sweden.
Venice Days section of the festival is equivalent of the Director's Fortnight at Cannes film festival which is dedicated to the independent films from across the globe.
