Peter Jackson, who is being feted with an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, will participate in its talks program, with Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton also announced for the onstage conversations.

They will follow in the wake of the likes of Meryl Streep and Pedro Almódovar who previously gave insights into their work in the conversations strand.

Oscar-winning New Zealand director Jackson will take to the stage to discuss his career the day after receiving his Palme d’Or at the opening ceremony for the festival running May 12 to 24.

Jackson has a long history with Cannes, having shown his first movie Bad Taste in the market in 1988, and then attended the legendary New Line event previewing sequences for The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001.

Oscar-winning actress Blanchett first attended Cannes in 1999 and served as its jury president in 2019. She has touched down in Official Selection eight times across her career with films that include Babel, Carol, The New Boy and most recently Rumours.

Alongside acting, she co-leads production company Dirty Films with Andrew Upton and Coco Francini, and has founded the Proof of Concept program supporting women, trans and non-binary voices, as well as the Displacement Film Fund for refugee filmmakers and those telling stories of displacement.

Swinton has appeared in Cannes Official Selection in close to 20 films including Love Is The Devil, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Only Lovers Left Alive, Okja and most recently Asteroid City in 2023. She was a jury member in 2004.

She first gained international recognition in 1992 for Sally Potter’s Orlando, directed by Sally Potter. A longtime collaborator of Derek Jarman, she appeared in all his films from 1985 until his death in 1994, winning Best Actress at the 1991 Venice Film Festival for Edward II.