The MOV’IN Cannes jury | Festival de Danse

Marion Barbeau

Chairwoman

French dancer and actress

Marion Barbeau began dancing at the age of 6. After a year at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, she joined the Paris Opera Ballet School in 2002. In 2008, she joined the Paris Opera Ballet, where she quickly rose through the ranks: Coryphée in 2013, Sujet in 2016 and then Première Danseuse in 2019. That same year, she co-founded the Alt.Take dance company with Simon Le Borgne, also a dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet. Her notable roles include Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Olga in Onegin and Marie in Iolanta-The Nutcracker. She has worked with
renowned choreographers such as Benjamin Millepied, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Hofesh Shechter and Alexander Ekman. Marion Barbeau also starred in Cédric Klapisch’s 2022 film En corps. Her performance earned her César and Lumières nominations for Most Promising Actress. She has appeared in music videos, notably Oxmo Puccino’s Tendrement and Hania Rani’s Soleil pâle. Marion Barbeau left the Paris Opera Ballet in 2024. Passionate about her art, she continues to combine classical dance, contemporary creations and cinema, embodying a major figure in contemporary French dance.

Jacques Ballard

Director of Photography (AFC)

The son of a painter, Jacques Ballard grew up in a world where light, colour and composition were his mother tongue. It is this sensitivity to the visual arts, combined with a fascination for physics, that shapes his cinematic vision, and it is in water that this vision finds its most radical expression. A space where gravity disappears, where the body regains a suspended grace, where the light is so unique.

From his long-standing collaboration with director Julie Gautier came AMA, filmed in the world’s deepest swimming pool, with no dialogue, just a weightless body and raw emotion. With over 75 million views, it won an award at the Berlin Music Video Awards. Together, they also created Runnin, a music video for Naughty Boy and Beyoncé selected for the prestigious Camerimage festival.

This mastery of the aquatic environment led him to The Deep House (2021), a horror film shot almost entirely underwater, for which he co-developed groundbreaking technologies.

A cinematographer with a wide-ranging portfolio, he has over 150 commercials to his name (Ferrari, Audi, Volkswagen…), a dozen documentaries shot in over 30 countries, and feature films selected for major international festivals.

Laure Cayla

Director of the Cannes Bastide Rouge business park and production studios

Laure Cayla has been managing the Cannes Bastide Rouge business park and production studios within an innovation hub dedicated to the audiovisual sector since it opened in Cannes in 2021. Drawing on her experience as an engineer, artist and manager of public institutions, she and her team contribute to the development of the cultural and creative industries. Within this unique creative hub, which brings together 1,200 students and numerous professionals, entrepreneurs and projects are supported in their endeavours, with the provision of workspaces, production and post-production studios. With more than 20 expert partners, Laure and her team support business development by guiding entrepreneurs in their search for funding and providing mentoring for business leaders. Through a programme of around 100 meetings, workshops and events per year, she helps to forge links between entrepreneurs, students and teachers/researchers in order to promote development and creativity.

Elise Gaiardo

Director, screenwriter

After a career in advertising at Publicis, she turned her attention to the world of cinema and cut her teeth in Paris as an actress. There, she discovered acting and directing.

In Los Angeles, she set up her production company, The Wild and The Free, and wrote the series CONFUSED, for which she directed the pilot (45 mins). CONFUSED was nominated at the NEW YORK TELEVISION FESTIVAL and won the CALCUTTA INTERNATIONAL CULT FILM FESTIVAL.

In Los Angeles, Elise also produced music videos and adverts and developed her one-woman show. She also wrote concepts for mini-series for CANAL+ and Accor Hotels.

Since returning to France, Elise has been developing a new comedy series, JULIETTE (8×26 – with Asacha Media), two feature films including BIG, co-written with Thibaud Segouin (César Award for Best Screenplay), an adaptation of a novel, and has directed two short films: BIGGER (Grand Prix at the MOV’IN Cannes International Dance Film Competition, Best Film Award at the Urban Film Festival and the Pierre Cardin Festival) and the absurdly funny MIAOU.

Elise loves to create powerful and intimate worlds, often explored through the body and dance, where a polished aesthetic reveals the full uniqueness of the human condition, with a hint of magic and a touch of humour.

Pontus Lidberg

Choreographer, filmmaker, dancer

Born in Stockholm, Pontus Lidberg has established himself as a leading figure on the contemporary dance scene, developing a distinctive body of work at the intersection of dance and film. A recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2019, he has built an international career marked by creations for both the stage and the screen.

His choreographies have been performed by leading companies, including the Paris Opera Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Semperoper Ballett Dresden, the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Beijing Dance Theater. His work is regularly commissioned by major institutions and festivals such as the Venice Biennale, Montpellier Danse, the Théâtre National de Chaillot, The Joyce Theater in New York, the New York City Center and the Havana International Ballet Festival.

Among his notable works are Siren, which won the UNEAC Villanueva Award in Cuba, and Centaur, which explores artificial intelligence in dance and received the Lumen Prize Nordic Award in 2021.

As a filmmaker, he has made a name for himself with *The Rain*, which was praised by *The New York Times*, and *Labyrinth Within*, winner of the Dance on Camera Festival in 2012. His first feature film, *Written on Water*, starring Aurélie Dupont, was screened at the FIFA in Montreal in 2021.

He was director of the Danish Dance Theatre from 2018 to 2023 and, since December 2024, has been artistic director of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Nice Côte d’Azur.

Sjón

Poet, novelist, lyricist for Björk and screenwriter

Born in Reykjavík in 1962, Sjón is an internationally renowned Icelandic author of novels, poetry, librettos and screenplays. His novels, such as The Blue Fox, have been translated into 40 languages and have received literary awards and nominations around the world.

Also working in film, he wrote the screenplay for the Icelandic film Lamb, which was presented in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ selection at Cannes in 2021 and received the Special Jury Prize. His screenplay for The Northman, which premiered worldwide in 2022, was co-written with director Robert Eggers. He was nominated for an Oscar in 2001 for writing the lyrics to the songs performed by Björk in Lars von Trier’s musical drama Dancer in the Dark.

In 2017, Sjón became the third writer – after Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell – to contribute to Future Library, a public art project based in Norway spanning 100 years. In 2023, he received the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, the academy’s second highest award after the Nobel Prize. He was named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2021 for his contribution to literature, film and songwriting.