John Cameron Mitchell Leads Cannes’ Queer Palm Jury: ‘Any Awards Help to Dignify Work’
Carole Horst How did John Cameron Mitchell become the head of this year’s Queer Palm award jury in Cannes? “Sexual favors,” he quips.
While the director of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” (which played out of competition at Cannes) is joking, sexuality is at the heart of one of the world’s most prestigious LGBTQ+ film awards.
And with more anti-queer legislation being enacted around the world than at any time in recent memory, the attention it brings to films that humanize this scapegoated population is arguably more important than ever. “The Queer Palm, the festival and any awards help to dignify work, so that it often can be distributed and sometimes celebrated in its own queer-phobic country,” says Mitchell, who helped start a queer dance night at the American Pavilion in 2004 and DJs when he’s in town. “[The trans-themed] ‘Joyland’ was banned in Pakistan until it got a lot of attention in the press, and [the government felt] that the ban was not worth the bad attention.” His fellow jurors are actress/director Isabel Sandoval, actress Louise Chevillotte, director Zeno Graton and film critic Cédric Succivalli, who’ll reveal the winner at a ceremony and party on May 26.
Queer Palm president Franck Finance-Madureira, initially inspired to launch the award in 2010 after seeing Mitchell’s “Shortbus,” is trying to meet the moment by starting a Queer Palm Lab to help first-time directors. “We [hope to] launch an open call at the end of the year to select our first five projects for 2024,” he says. “We’ll mentor them for a year, and Belgian director Lukas Dhont (“Close”) will be the godfather of this first edition.” [The Lab was announced in 2022 and set to begin this year, but is still
