Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival: Alice Rohrwacher to Lead 2025 Jury

As the film world gears up for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the announcement that Alice Rohrwacher will head the Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival jury has captured significant international attention. This prestigious award, established in 1978, honors the best first feature across all sections of the festival — from Official Selection to Directors' Fortnight and Critics’ Week. The Caméra d’Or  has long symbolized the festival’s deep commitment to discovering new cinematic voices and launching the careers of daring, original filmmakers.

Rohrwacher is no stranger to Cannes. Her debut Heavenly Body premiered at Directors’ Fortnight in 2011. She won the Grand Prix in 2014 with The Wonders, and in 2018 shared the Best Screenplay prize for Happy As Lazzaro alongside Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces. Most recently, she returned to Cannes in 2023 with La Chimera, again featured in the main competition. Her repeated presence at the Cannes Film Festival, and now as president of the Caméra d’Or jury, cements her as a key figure in European and Italian cinema.

The festival’s official statement on April 18 praised Rohrwacher as “a figure of the new Italian cinema,” blending “De Sica’s realism and Fellini’s dreamlike vision.” Her unique storytelling, positioned between fiction and documentary, aligns closely with the spirit of the Caméra d’Or at Cannes  — a prize that celebrates boundary-pushing new voices. In Rohrwacher’s own words: “First times are always important… something golden haloes these moments. Is that why the most prestigious award for a first film is called Caméra d’Or?”

Rohrwacher’s appointment also reflects a broader shift toward feminist and ecological narratives within Italian cinema. In Wandering Women: Urban Ecology in Contemporary Feminist Italian Filmmaking, scholar Laura Di Bianco situates Rohrwacher among a generation of female directors who explore themes of displacement, urban wandering, and identity through cinematic storytelling. These narratives, often symbolized through walking, reclaim agency for women in public and narrative space — resisting dominant male-centered storytelling conventions.

The Anthropocene landscapes Rohrwacher captures in her films — decaying cities, vanishing nature, and alienated humanity — position her as a filmmaker deeply attuned to the socio-ecological crises of our time. Her selection to lead the Caméra d’Or at Cannes not only honors her own debut roots but also serves as a powerful artistic and curatorial gesture: one that aligns with the festival’s mission to champion voices that are fresh, politically resonant, and formally inventive.

With Juliette Binoche presiding over the main competition jury and Robert De Niro receiving an honorary Palme d’Or, the 2025 Cannes Film Festival clearly signals its investment in multigenerational cinematic excellence. Within this constellation, Rohrwacher’s presidency of the Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival is a definitive statement — one that elevates emerging filmmakers and reaffirms Cannes’ role as a launchpad for the future of global cinema.