Ebru Ceylan, a famous Turkish photographer and the spouse of director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, introduced her distinctive imaginative and prescient and creative sensibility to the jury at this 12 months’s Cannes Movie Competition.
Together with Nuri Bilge Ceylan, she has co-written screenplays for a finest director award winner (“Three Monkeys,” 2008), a Grand Prix winner, “As soon as Upon a Time in Anatolia,” 2011), a screenplay winner (“About Dry Grasses,” 2023) and a Palme d’Or winner (“Winter Sleep,” 2014) on the Competition de Cannes.
Ebru Ceylan joined different jurors, together with filmmaker Greta Gerwig and actress Lily Gladstone, on the 77th version of the Cannes Movies Competition, which ran Could 14-25. She talked about her journey, inspirations, and experiences at Cannes.
Are you able to inform us about your jury expertise in Cannes?
It’s tough for folks with very completely different understandings of cinema to return collectively and resolve. A very good film or a foul film could be very private. As a jury, it’s unattainable to determine a particularly subjective relationship with movies. What makes you’re keen on a film is commonly feeling inside you. However extra is required to defend the movie. In the event you attempt to be pushed by guidelines, you can be left with didactic guidelines and comparisons, that are by no means sufficient to judge a film. Even when a cinematic rule applies in a single film, it could not work in one other. Typically, a film that defies all guidelines and turns every little thing upside-down can nonetheless be a film you’re keen on. So, the underside line is that there is no such thing as a single fact to this matter.
Though awards have important results on movies and movie tradition, they could not at all times efficiently reveal a movie’s profound actuality and worth. I feel it’s essential to make an additional effort to attenuate this handicap and to meet this accountability as precisely as potential. That’s the reason we labored further exhausting, talked about films, mentioned them, and exchanged concepts. It was a really instructive and mind-expanding course of.
Being a juror was an thrilling and motivating marathon during which you concentrate on exactly what you’re impressed with, search for methods to specific it to the opposite particular person solely, and attempt to spotlight the movies you assist and your understanding of cinema, contemplating the chances and balances.
This 12 months, 22 movies competed in the primary competitors on the pageant, so we needed to watch nearly three films daily.
In the primary theater (Lumiere), the place the competitors movies are proven, the jury watches the movie from a field reserved for them and their kin. We gathered each two days in a gathering room reserved for the jury within the pageant’s primary constructing to speak in regards to the movies we had watched. We briefly shared our opinions in regards to the movies with out going into an excessive amount of element.
On the day of the awards ceremony, they picked us up from our accommodations within the morning and took us to a non-public villa simply outdoors Cannes. Our telephones have been collected, in case the outcomes have been leaked.
After a contentious assembly and hours of voting, we sat at a desk ready for us among the many timber within the villa’s backyard. Competition president Thierry Fremaux was additionally current at this final assembly however as a spectator, with out being concerned in any resolution.
With the aid that the dialogue was over, with out our telephones, we tried to benefit from the silence, nature, the solar, and the aid of getting accomplished our mission with out incident.
We have been taken on to the pageant constructing because the closing ceremony approached. Closing rehearsal, dressing, preparation, and many others., have been accomplished within the preparation rooms reserved for us within the pageant constructing to keep away from any danger to the confidentiality of the outcomes. From there, we have been dropped at the crimson carpet to enter the awards ceremony with out interacting with anybody — afterward, the award ceremony and pageant dinner. Our telephones have been solely given again after the ceremony.
It’s a lengthy and tiring marathon, each bodily and mentally, as there will not be solely films to look at but additionally many facet occasions equivalent to invites and meals to be attended. Because of this, they stored the consolation and comfort of the jury at a particularly excessive degree.
What sort of jury president was Greta Gerwig?
Greta Gerwig is an egoless, pretty, emotional, and very light one who naturally has a necessary attribute {that a} inventive artist ought to have being all in favour of others. The burden on her was undoubtedly extra important, however she managed and accomplished the method cheerfully and open-heartedly, making us really feel comfy. She even arrange a WhatsApp group for us to speak after the pageant. She was an individual I used to be joyful to know.
What was your typical day like throughout the pageant?
After waking up early and having breakfast on the lodge, I reviewed the writings in regards to the movies proven the day past. Many jury members mentioned they don’t have a look at what was written to keep away from being influenced, however I used to be it and informed them. Afterward, I’d stroll on the seashore with Nuri Bilge (Ceylan) and watch films that will final all day till midnight.
Was there a second or expertise on the pageant that impressed you?
One afternoon, throughout a quick break of just one hour, we went to the mayor of Cannes for a fast lunch within the backyard of the previous church within the Cannes fort. Abruptly, the music I utilized in my brief movie “Kiyida,” which competed at Cannes, began enjoying within the open air. They researched and located one thing that had a novel skilled which means for every jury member. It created an odd and exquisite feeling for us.