Shanghai Film Festival: Nuri Bilge Ceylan to Chair Competition Jury

The Turkish filmmaker, who won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 2014, will lead the international jury that decides the winners of the event's Golden Goblet Awards.

Celebrated Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a familiar presence on the international festival circuit, will preside over the main competition jury at the next Shanghai International Film Festival. The festival unveiled Ceylan's appointment Monday, saying that additional jury members would be announced soon.

Turkey's leading champion of international art cinema, Ceylan's work is characterized by its static long takes, natural settings, innovative use of silence and probing existential themes.

His epic story of a marriage, Winter Sleep — with a runtime well over three hours — won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 2014. This triumph built on Ceylan's earlier career achievements, including two wins of Cannes' jury prize — for Uzak (2002) and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) — as well as the festival's best director trophy for the drama Three Monkeys (2008).

Ceylan's most recent work, The Wild Pear Tree, premiered in competition at Cannes last year. A coming-of-age story set in contemporary Turkey, the film — "laced with philosophy, religion, politics and moral puzzles" — was summed up by THR critic Deborah Young as "a slow, dense look at Turkey today," but one with profound final sequences that "are worth the wait."

Founded in 1993, the Shanghai festival is China's most established international film event. Previous jury presidents include Danny Boyle, Luc Besson, Wong Kar Wai, Barry Levinson, Tom Hooper, John Woo, Gong Li and Jiang Wen.

This year's Shanghai International Film Festival runs June 15-24 in China's commercial capital.

