The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) announced award winning Danish director Bille August as jury president for it’s International competition in the upcoming 40th edition, which opens 20 November.

August is a recipient of numerous awards including an Oscar, Golden Globe, and twice a Palme d’Or, making him one of the few directors to win all three top international awards.

August said he was excited and honoured to be the festival’s jury president, according to a press release from CIFF.

August added: "What a great film can do is to give soul and heart to moments, to characters, and to give us the possibility to identify with other people … and because we are able to portray the individual human being in a film, it also gives us a possibility, in short moments, to understand something about the world in the greater picture."

Born in 1948 in Denmark, August studied cinema at The National Film School of Denmark. His first feature film, Honning mane (In my Life, 1978), earned him the Bodil Award for Best Danish Film.

August's major international success was with the film Pelle Erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror, 1987), which scooped all three major accolades in cinema: the Palme d'Or, and the Oscar, and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

His second Palme d’or was for Den Goda Viljan (The Best Intentions, 1992).

August went on to direct international and Hollywood films with the industry’s superstars, including The House of the Spirits (1993) starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, Les Misérables (1998) starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush and Uma Thurman, and more recently the film 55 Steps (2017) starring Hilary Swank and Helena Bonham Carter.

Some of his other notable films include A Song for Martin, Goodbye Bafana, and Silent Heart.

For his work, August has been honoured by the Danish and the Swedish Royal Order of Chivalry as well as the French Order Chivalry for Art and Writing. 

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