The guild will soon start the recruiting process for the next artistic director of Directors’ Fortnight.
Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, the section running alongside the Cannes Film Festival, is set to change its leadership after the 2022 edition. It will be Paolo Moretti’s third and last edition as artistic director of the programme.
The SRF (Société des réalisateurs de films) which is the governing body of Directors Fortnight, said that the announcement comes as part of a move to overhaul the 60-year parallel section.
In a statement, SRF said: “The board, elected in September 2021, wishes to thoroughly rethink the Directors’ Fortnight, its name, its singularity and its strategic and militant position. As such, and in order to carry out this new project, it will soon be welcoming a new general delegate. The SRF salutes the work accomplished by Paolo Moretti since 2018, his commitment to films and filmmakers, the quality of his selections, his unfailing professionalism and his management of the particularly difficult period of the health crisis. The SRF reaffirms its confidence in him for the 2022 edition of the Directors’ Fortnight, which is currently being prepared and will take place in May.”
The body said recruitment of the new delegate general will take place in the run-up to the Cannes Film Festival in May, and that the new appointee will take office in November 2022 and oversee the 2023 edition. A call for candidates is due to go out shortly.
Moretti joined Directors’ Fortnight in 2019 from the Roche-sur-Yon Festival, where he had been artistic director since 2014.
He was the first non-French national to head any Cannes section, having held roles as a programmer at festivals and film institutions across Europe. He was also one of the few programmers based in continental Europe with strong ties to the UK, having worked at the Leeds International Film Festival early in his career.
Moretti programmed his first edition in 2019 but had to abandon his 2020 line-up after the main Cannes Film Festival and all parallel sections were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
