Cannes 2016: Meet the Jury Members

France: The world's most glamorous film festival opens in the French Riviera resort of Cannes on Wednesday.

Meet the jury members who will decide who wins the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or, on May 22:

George Miller

The 71-year-old Australian president of the jury trained as a doctor before creating the outback post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max, partly inspired by his days working in a hospital emergency room.

Arnaud Desplechin

The 55-year-old French maker of the 2008 film A Christmas Tale had another hit last year with My Golden Days and is a connoisseur of family dramas.

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten, 34, the former child actor has had built a glittering career matching arthouse hits like Interview with the Vampire and The Virgin Suicides with blockbusters such as the SpiderMan films.

Valeria Golino

The Italian actor-director is best known for her part in Rain Man alongside Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Her first feature, Honey, was screened at Cannes in 2013.

Mads Mikkelsen

Denmark's best known export after bacon and beer made his name as a sensitive cop in the Pusher film trilogy before playing a memorable line of baddies including Le Chiffre in the Bond film Casino Royale and Dr Hannibal Lecter in the television version of the cultured cannibal story.

Mads Mikkelson, 50, also stars in the new Star Wars film, Rogue One. His inclusion on the jury was somewhat controversial, as he is a close friend of Dane Nicolas Winding Refn, who is in the running for the Palme d'Or.

Laszlo Nemes

The Hungarian director's debut feature, Son of Saul, picked up the Best Foreign Language Picture Award at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes this year as well as the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2015.

It was described by Claude Lanzmann as one of the best films he had seen on the Holocaust, no mean praise from the French maker of epic documentary Shoah.

Vanessa Paradis

The French singer and actress began as a model before becoming a huge film and singing star in France and having two children with Hollywood star Johnny Depp.

Katayoon Shahabi

The Iranian producer, who was born in 1968, is very successful in her homeland. She has made a series of documentaries, including one about the impact of the Oscar Asghar Farhadi won in 2012 for the acclaimed A Separation had on the Islamic Republic. Farhadi is again in the running for the Palme d'Or this year with The Salesman.

Donald Sutherland

The veteran Canadian actor, now the head of a thespian dynasty that includes his son Kiefer Sutherland and granddaughter Sarah, made his name with the war film The Dirty Dozen before starring in the Oscar-winning thriller Klute alongside Jane Fonda.

With a career spanning over five decades, Donald Sutherland made a comeback in The Hunger Games franchise.