Patrice Chereau named Cannes jury chair

Openly gay French filmmaker Patrice Chereau (Queen Margot, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train) has been chosen to head the 2003 Cannes Film Festival jury, according to BBC News. This year's festival runs May 14-25. Chereau's most recent film was the explicitly sexual love story Intimacy, based on the novel by Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette). Chereau says he hopes to make this year's festival into "a tool of reflection to try to understand where the cinema industry is at--and above all, to watch films and love them." Festival president Gilles Jacob said that Chereau's work "makes him a scrupulous eyewitness and very open to all types of cinema today and all cinema of the world."