Alexander Payne named next jury member for the Venice Film Festival

U.S. director Alexander Payne will head the main competition jury at this year’s Venice Film Festival, the organisers said on Monday.

Payne’s films, including the comedies The Holdovers, Sideway andThe Descendantshave been nominated for a total 24 Oscars, including four times for Best Picture and three times for Best Director.

He has won twice for Best Adapted Screenplay.

“It’s an enormous honour and joy to serve on the jury at Venice. Although I share a filmmaker’s ambivalence about comparing films against one another, I revere the Venice Film Festival’s nearly 100-year history of loudly celebrating film as an art form,” Payne said in a statement.

The 82nd Venice Film Festival, held on the lagoon city’s Lido island, will run from August 27 to September 6. The movies in competition will be announced in July.

Payne’s 2017 comedy Downsizing opened the festival in 2017.