For a filmmaker whose most up-to-date film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards and who has twice gained the Palme d’Or, the highest prize on the Cannes Film Festival, it’d sound unusual to listen to Ruben Ostlund say he doesn’t give attention to success.

“I’m much more interested in when we fail as human beings than when we succeed,” stated the Swedish director, who will lead the jury at this 12 months’s competition, which runs from Tuesday to May 27.

Mr. Ostlund, 49, won the Palme d’Or, final 12 months for “Triangle of Sadness,” a category satire set aboard a doomed luxurious yacht, and for his previous feature, “The Square,” an unsparing sendup of the artwork world, in 2017. Mr. Ostlund is one in all solely nine filmmakers who’ve a number of Palmes d’Or to his credit score — and one in all three to win the award for consecutive movies.

After its success at Cannes, “Triangle of Sadness,” which was Mr. Ostlund’s first movie totally in English, went on to turn into an art-house hit in each Europe and America, and was nominated for 3 Oscars — for greatest image, greatest director and greatest unique screenplay — however didn’t win any.

In his three most up-to-date options, beginning with 2014’s “Force Majeure,” Mr. Ostlund has consciously tried to get away from a sure kind of European art-house movie that’s usually cerebral, difficult and extreme.

“I wanted to create a wild, entertaining ride at the same time that I was trying to talk about the content that I thought was important or that I was curious about, and not making a contradiction between those things,” he stated in late April throughout a video interview, talking from his home in Campos, Majorca.

He pointed to the political comedies of Lina Wertmüller, the Italian director whose 1974 movie “Swept Away” was a transparent touchstone for “Triangle of Sadness,” and the surreal provocations of the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel as examples of serious-minded movies which might be additionally nice enjoyable to observe.

In a statement asserting Mr. Ostlund as jury president in February, competition organizers referred to as the choice a “tribute to films that are uncompromising and forthright and which constantly demand that viewers challenge themselves and that art continue to invent itself.”

“Contrary to popular belief, thought-provoking cinema can also be popular,” Philippe Bober, one of many producers on “Triangle of Sadness,” wrote in an e mail.

“We want to make uncompromising auteur films but also to embrace the audience,” Mr. Bober continued. He has labored with Mr. Ostlund since 2005.

“The bad news for producers,” Mr. Bober added, referring to himself and the movie’s different Oscar-nominated producer, Erik Hemmendorff, “is that if you want to make good films, you have to support your directors’ radicalism when they are experimenting with form and content for a long period of time before you make money.”

The vital and well-liked popularity of “Triangle of Sadness” appears a vindication of Mr. Bober’s religion in Mr. Ostlund.

The humor, usually acid-laced, that makes the Swedish director’s movies so entertaining is usually deeply discomfiting — and typically downright squirmworthy. This has proved divisive, with some viewers relating to his work as manipulative or downright merciless (“Triangle of Sadness” contains an audaciously lengthy vomiting scene), and others hailing him as an uncommonly perceptive social commentator.

“I think all my approaches in my films are looking at human behavior, creating dilemmas,” Mr. Ostlund stated, “in order to try to tell something about us human beings.” He added that he tried to create “scenes where I believe that, yeah, this is an accurate and a true picture of our behavior” with out pointing fingers.

“I’m happy,” he added, “if I can reach the level of a really good sociological experiment.”

According to Owen Gleiberman, chief movie critic for Variety journal, “Triangle of Sadness” is “very much a movie of its moment.”

“It’s about the 1 percent, and it’s about the 1 percent getting their comeuppance. And that’s a good theme and it’s a gratifying theme,” stated Mr. Gleiberman, who attended his first Cannes Film Festival in 1996. At the identical time, he stated he felt that the movie was “too in love with its own satirical excess.” While he was delighted by the sudden Palme d’Or win for “The Square,” he felt “Triangle of Sadness” was much less deserving of the prize.

“There’s no rule that says that a director shouldn’t take the Palme d’Or twice in five years,” Mr. Gleiberman stated. “But when that happens, it’s usually an indication not that he has made two masterpieces, but that he’s become a Cannes darling.” As such, the truth that Mr. Ostlund was tapped to go the Cannes jury, Mr. Gleiberman added, “makes perfect sense.”

“I hesitated a little bit because of the burden of the position actually,” Mr. Ostlund stated about being requested to chair the jury. His eight co-jurors embrace the American actors Paul Dano and Brie Larson, the Argentine director Damián Szifron, and the French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, who gained the Palme d’Or in 2021 for “Titane,” a controversial body-horror movie.

Even although nobody particular person will get to resolve the winners, the awards at Cannes usually turn into recognized with that 12 months’s jury president. Historically talking, the movies which have taken the Palme d’Or, Mr. Gleiberman urged, are “not some list of masterpieces.”

“It’s more like the good, the bad and the ugly,” he stated.

Mr. Ostlund appeared all too conscious of this when he urged that the Palme d’Or awarded by a jury president is “something that can follow you then through your career,” for good or for unwell.

But Mr. Ostlund stated it was vital, above all, for him to endorse what Cannes stands for. “For me, it is the festival in the world that is on the barricades fighting for cinema” and a “provocative approach to cinema as an art form,” he stated.

“The last year when I had been traveling around with ‘Triangle of Sadness,’ I have tried to really promote cinema, talked about the advantage of cinema, talked about what are the qualities of watching things together instead of sitting in front of an individual screen,” he added.

The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo, one other Cannes favourite, stated that the competition related him to an “ethical, fundamental state of what does that mean to be a filmmaker and a true believer in film as the seventh art.”

Films by Mr. Mundruczo, 48, and Mr. Ostlund have shared lineups at Cannes a number of occasions. In 2014, they each headlined the competition’s Un Certain Regard sidebar: Mr. Mundruczo’s “White God” gained high prize and Mr. Ostlund’s “Force Majeure” took the jury prize. Three of Mr. Mundruczo’s different movies have screened in the principle competitors at Cannes; he was invited to be a juror at Cannes twice however declined due to prior commitments.

While expressing reservations about operating movies like horses in a race, Mr. Mundruczo, who has chaired juries at different festivals, stated he loved the expertise — and never solely as a result of it pressured him to soak up a number of movies a day.

“As a jury member, you feel like you can give your taste, your honesty and your vision of the future of cinema and all your love of cinema,” Mr. Mundruczo stated in an interview in Berlin, the place he lives.

Mr. Ostlund, who has additionally served on movie competition juries earlier than, stated it was vital to maintain the group dynamics and ensure everybody “feels that they are seen.”

“I think I will have a very Swedish approach when it comes to running the jury,” he stated.

“It will be a democracy.”