Leïla Bekhti chairs the jury for Un Certain Regard in Cannes

French actress Leïla Bekhti will chair the 2026 Un Certain Regard Awards jury cannes film festival.

A regular at the Cannes Film Festival, Behetti rose to prominence in Jacques Audiard’s “The Prophet” and won the 2011 César Award for Most Promising Actress for “All That Glitters.” Senegalese producer and director Angel Diabon, Italian director and screenwriter Laura Samani, French director Thomas Kelly and Lebanese composer Khaled Mouzanar will join the jury.

“Receiving this honor from the Cannes Film Festival is a source of great joy for me. I feel a deep sense of gratitude,” Behti said. His other notable performances include “Paris, l’Amour,” “The Fountainhead,” “Sink or Swim,” and “The Restless.” “For the first time I found myself in this unique position: watching, listening, sharing, celebrating. Making films taught me that cinema is a place of encounter with others, with myself, with the world. Discovering them together with the jury, living this timeless experience, is both a responsibility and a joy.”

Behti added: “I look forward to the exchange, dialogue and questioning of the perspectives that make up the richness of this living art. Ultimately, I will be sitting in that most precious seat of all: the audience’s seat.”

This year’s Un Certain Regard competition kicks off with “Teen Sex and Death in Camp Miasma,” directed by Jane Schoenbrun and starring Hannah Einbinder (“Hackers”) and Gillian Anderson (“Sex Education”), and also includes Jordan Forstmann’s directorial debut “The Club,” starring himself, karaoke kid Caldieti Kaleva and Eldar Isgandarov. Isgandarov. Other films in the 12-film lineup include Laïla Marrakchi’s “Strawberries,” Sandra Wollner’s “Every Time,” Rakan Mayasi’s “Yesterday,” and Abhinash Bikram Shah’s “Yesterday.”