A jury of internationally acclaimed actors and filmmakers convenes to award the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature, Best New Narrative Filmmaker, and Best Actor and Actress in a Narrative Feature prizes. Learn more about the jury, which includes Souleymane Cissé, Scott Glenn, David Gordon Green, Rula Jebreal, Art Linson, Jason Sudeikis, Dianne Wiest.
Souleymane Cissé
Souleymane Cissé is a director, writer, and producer from Mali. After high school in Dakar, he returned to Mali in 1960, when the country became independent. He decided to become a filmmaker after seeing a documentary on Lumumba’s arrest. He traveled to Moscow to study film and began working as a projectionist. In 1970, he was hired as a cameraman by the Malian Ministry of Information. Two years later, he made Cinq Jours D'Une Vie, which won the Festival of Carthage. His first feature film, The Girl tells the story of a young mute girl who is raped. It was banned in Mali and resulted in Cissé’s imprisonment. The years that followed brought the acclaimed films The Work and The Wind, both awarded the Etalon de Yenenga Fespac at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou. In 1987, Light won the Jury Prize at Cannes and brought Cissé international acclaim. His film Waat (The Time) was released in 1995.He serves as president of the Union of West African Cinema and Audiovisual Designers and Entrepreneurs and is a Commander of the National Order of Mali and Commander of Arts and Letters in France. His new film, MinYè was presented at Cannes in 2009.
Scott Glenn
Scott Glenn has exhibited a freewheeling versatility and powerful reality of characterization throughout his career in film, on stage, and on television. Those traits are vitally present in his most recent and upcoming portrayals. Scott stars in the independent film Magic Valley, which makes its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. Also this year, Scott starred in the action fantasy thriller Sucker Punch. In 2010 Glenn co-starred opposite Diane Lane in the biographical film Secretariat,and in 2008 he was featured in both Nights in Rodanthe and as Donald Rumsfeld in Oliver Stone’s W. His other recent film credits include The Bourne Ultimatum, Camille, Freedom Writers, Puerto Vallarta Squeeze, The Shipping News, Buffalo Soldiers, Training Day, and Vertical Limit. After more than 20 years pursuing a career as a novelist, poet, and journalist, Glenn launched his acting career with a number of off-Broadway productions. He won small parts in Nashville and Apocalypse Now before going on to major roles in films like Urban Cowboy, Personal Best, The Challenge, The Right Stuff, Silverado, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs, Backdraft, Tall Tale, Reckless, Courage Under Fire, Carla’s Song, Absolute Power, and The Virgin Suicides.
David Gordon Green
David Gordon Green garnered the Best Film Award from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival with his directorial debut, George Washington. The film also landed on the annual top 10 lists of Roger Ebert, the New York Times, and TIME magazine. His other credits include All the Real Girls, Undertow, Snow Angels, Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and the HBO series Eastbound and Down. Green is currently in post-production on his upcoming film, The Sitter, for 20th Century Fox. Green, a graduate of North Carolina School of the Arts, was born in Arkansas, raised in Texas, and currently resides in Austin, Texas.
Rula Jebreal
Rula Jebreal was born in Haifa, Israel in 1973 and was brought to an orphanage at the age of five after the death of her mother. In 1993 she received a scholarship from the Italian government to study medicine and earned a degree in physiotherapy from Bologna University, later going back to school for journalism and political science. She immediately started working for Italian newspapers. Her area of expertise is foreign affairs related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the uprising of Islamic movements. In 2000, she started working in television as a news anchor and in 2004 she started her daily talk show, Omnibus. She has been honored by Media Watch and won the International Ischia Award for best journalist of the year. In 2006, she became the co-presenter of Italy’s controversial political TV show Anno Zero. She has written three books: Miral, La promise d'Aswan, and Divieto di soggiorno. Recently, she wrote the screenplay for the film Miral based on her book. The film, directed by Julian Schnabel, premiered at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and first played in the U.S. before the United Nations.
Art Linson
Art Linson has distinguished himself in Hollywood as a producer, writer, and director. His producing credits range from such commercial and critical hits as Academy Award® winner The Untouchables, Heat, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Car Wash, and Scrooged, to unusual classics such as Melvin and Howard (winner of two Academy Awards®), Fight Club, This Boy’s Life, and Into The Wild. Linson also directed the cult film Where the Buffalo Roam, starring Bill Murray as Hunter S. Thompson. In 1995 Linson published his first book, A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood. His second, What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line, came in 2002. Linson wrote the screenplay adaptation of What Just Happened?, which was directed by Barry Levinson and starred Robert De Niro. It was the closing night film of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Born in Chicago, Linson grew up in Hollywood. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated from UCLA Law School in 1967.
Jason Sudeikis
Jason Sudeikis is currently in his eighth season on NBC’s venerable Saturday Night Live. He spent the first two years as a writer and has been a cast member for the past six years. This year, Jason starred opposite Owen Wilson in the Farrelly Brothers’ film Hall Pass, about two guys who are granted “a week of freedom” from their wives. He also leads a cast that includes Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston in this summer’s Horrible Bosses. Jason has received rave reviews for his arc on 30 Rock, and he has also guest starred on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and can be heard as two characters on the Seth MacFarlane animated comedy The Cleveland Show. Sudeikis’ film credits include The Bounty Hunter, Going the Distance, What Happens in Vegas, The Ten, Watching the Detectives, Bill, Semi-Pro, The Rocker, and A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, which screens at the Festival this year. After growing up in Kansas, Sudeikis made his way to Chicago, where he got his start performing with The Second City National Touring Company, Improv Olympic, The Annoyance Theater, and Boom Chicago in Amsterdam.
Dianne Wiest
Dianne Wiest was most recently seen in John Cameron Mitchell’s critically acclaimed Rabbit Hole alongside Nicole Kidman. Before that, Wiest’s major on-screen credits include Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, I Am Sam, Hannah and her Sisters (for which she won an Oscar®), The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, September, Bullets Over Broadway (another Oscar® win), Parenthood (Oscar® nomination), Edward Scissorhands, and The Birdcage. Wiest also received an Emmy for The Road to Avonlea and for her performance in the HBO series In Treatment. On the stage, Wiest was most recently seen in The Forest at Classic Stage Company, and before that, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons on Broadway. Other New York theater appearances include The Seagull at Classic Stage Company, Wendy Wasserstein’s Third, Memory House by Kathleen Tolan, Salome, Oedipus, The Shawl, Hunting Cockroaches, After the Fall, Beyond Therapy, and The Art of Dining. Wiest will next be seen in David Frankel’s The Big Year, Lawrence Kasdan’s Darling Companion, and Peter Hedges’ The Odd Life of Timothy Green.
