Mélanie Thierry Revelation Jury President

©Sabine Vil­liard

The Mys­tery of Mélanie Thierry

Whether in film, the­ater or tele­vi­sion, Mélanie Thier­ry has now for over 20 years dis­tilled her sweet per­fume of mys­tery, that of an unclas­si­fi­able actress, one with an acute sense of craft and a career full of side steps, feline leaps and entrechats, of sur­pris­es and feints, in France as well as in the Unit­ed States.

She turned heads in Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1998 film The Leg­end of 1900, then made her mark in the the­ater when Jacques Weber cast her in the impres­sive role of a young schiz­o­phrenic in Aman­da Sthers’ “Old Blonde Jew.” In 2008, she was the female lead in Math­ieu Kasso­vitz’ block­buster Baby­lon A.D., then rejoined Jérôme Salle for an ambi­tious com­mer­cial project, Largo Winch, an adap­ta­tion of the Fran­co-Bel­gian graph­ic nov­el of the same name.

In 2010, she won the César for Most Promis­ing Actress for Philippe Godeau’s One for the Road, then played the haughty and proud lead role in Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Mont­pen­si­er the fol­low­ing year.

André Tech­iné direct­ed her as a trou­ble­mak­er in Unfor­giv­able, Stéphane Cazes put her behind bars for Ombline, Stéphanie di Gius­to made her into The Dancer. Her career then took her to the Unit­ed States, where she act­ed oppo­site Christoph Waltz in Ter­ry Gilliam’s Zero The­o­rem, then Beni­cio del Toro in Fer­nan­do Léon de Aranoa’s film A Per­fect Day.

In 2017, Albert Dupon­tel cast her as the Péri­courts’ maid in See You Up There, a major hit with crit­ics and audi­ences. Emmanuel Finkiel then renewed his loy­al­ty to her from A Decent Man with Mem­oir of War, in which she por­trayed Mar­guerite Duras with excep­tion­al grace, a per­for­mance that earned her a César nom­i­na­tion for Best Actress. In 2020, Spike Lee offered her a lead role in Da 5 Bloods.

Mélanie Thier­ry has also ven­tured into series, with as much temer­i­ty as tal­ent: we saw her plunge into the hell of Syr­ia in Oded Ruskin’s No Man’s Land, and she was excep­tion­al as a sur­geon com­plete­ly trans­fer­ring onto her shrink in Éric Toledano and Olivi­er Nakache’s In Ther­a­py.

Then came a time for musi­cal com­e­dy and fan­ta­sy in 2021, when she sang in Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu’s Tralala.

She was a mem­ber of the Rev­e­la­tion Jury for the 2007 Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val, and this year offi­ci­ates as pres­i­dent of this jury ded­i­cat­ed to discovery.

Louis Roed­er­er Foundation

The Mai­son Louis Roed­er­er, an Offi­cial Part­ner of the Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val since 2016, rein­forced its sup­port in 2018 by asso­ci­at­ing the Louis Roed­er­er Foun­da­tion, a major patron of the arts, with the Rev­e­la­tion Prize, which each year rec­og­nizes an orig­i­nal work and its promis­ing creator.

“In line with what moti­vates our Foun­da­tion, we were delight­ed to asso­ciate our­selves, six years ago now, with the Rev­e­la­tion Prize. We thus con­tribute to pro­mot­ing Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma, while shin­ing a light on young tal­ents who will become the great direc­tors of tomor­row. For this new edi­tion, we are thrilled to col­lab­o­rate with Pres­i­dent Mélanie Thier­ry and the oth­er mem­bers of the 2023 Rev­e­la­tion Jury.”

- Frédéric Rouza­ud, Pres­i­dent of the Louis Roed­er­er Foundation