Alexander Payne Named President of 82nd Venice Film Festival

Alexander Payne has been named president of the international jury of the 82nd Venice Film Festival, heading the group who decides winners of the Golden Lion for best film, the two Silver Lions (one for film, one directing), the Volpi Cup for best actor and actress and several other awards. The festival takes place Aug. 27 – Sept. 6, 2025.

“It’s an enormous honor and joy to serve on the jury at Venice,” Payne said via statement. “Although I share a filmmaker’s ambivalence about comparing films against one another, I revere the Venice Film Festival’s nearly 100-year history of loudly celebrating film as an art form. I couldn’t be more excited.”

Festival director Alberto Barbera added, ““Alexander Payne belongs to the small circle of filmmakers-cinephiles whose passion for cinema is fueled by knowledge of films of the past and curiosity about contemporary cinema, without boundaries or barriers of any kind. These qualities — along with his experience as a screenwriter — make him an ideal candidate to preside over the work of the Venice Jury, which is called upon to evaluate films from around the world. I am grateful to Alexander for accepting my invitation, which seals an acquaintance that goes back to the days of his graduation short film at UCLA.”

Payne is a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter (for “Sideways” and “The Descendants”) and three-time nominee for Best Director (“The Descendants,” “Nebraska” and “Sideways”). His most recent film, “The Holdovers,” was nominated for Best Picture (one of four total nods his movies have earned in that category) and won Da’Vine Joy Randolph an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2024. At the moment, he is prepping a new film that will be shot in rural Denmark.

The jury that Payne leads will be made up of “no more than nine international celebrities in the spheres of film and culture from different countries,” according to the festival. They will announce awards on the final night of the festival, Sept. 6.

Last year, French actress Isabelle Huppert chaired the jury that awarded the Golden Lion to Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door.”

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