Film-maker Jane Campion is to head this year’s jury at the Cannes Film Festival, organisers have announced.
The New Zealander is best known for The Piano, which made her the first, and so far only, female winner of the Palme d’Or at the French film gala in 1993.
Campion said she was “truly honoured” to be offered the role, adding: “I can’t wait.”
The director succeeds Steven Spielberg in the role. This year’s Cannes Film Festival takes place from 14-25 May.
Campion, whose work on The Piano won her a best screenplay Oscar, was called “a major film-maker and indefatigable pioneer” by Cannes organisers.
The film, in which a mute mail-order bride and her daughter arrive in New Zealand with few possessions, except a large piano, also netted Academy Awards for actresses Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin.
More recently, Campion worked on television drama The Lake, which reunited her with Hunter. The mini-series was screened on BBC Two in the UK.
Campion called Cannes “a mythical and exciting festival where amazing things can happen, actors are discovered, films are financed, careers are made.
“I know this because that is what happened to me!” she added in a statement posted on the festival’s website.