French director Catherine Breillat and Taiwanese producer Peggy Chiao will light up the jury for Venice's Upstream competition (Controcorrente). Lebanese film critic Ghassan Abdoul-Khalek will head the jury, which also includes FIPRESCI chief Klaus Eder and Italian director-critic Enrico Ghezzi.

The winner of the cutting-edge section's San Marco prize will be awarded Euros50,000 to be divided equally between director and producer. The jurors will also hand out a special jury prize and two special mentions.

Breillat's credits include Sex Is Comedy and Romance, while Chiao, also a film professor, has produced Beijing Bicycle and Betelnut Beauty.

Meanwhile, Venice announced that Italian director Paolo Virzi will lead the separate "Luigi de Laurentiis" jury, which will award a Euros100,000 "Lion of the Future" prize and 20,000m of Kodak film to the best debut feature in any section of the festival. The prize is sponsored by Filmauro, the Rome production-distribution outfit set up by Dino de Laurentiis's brother Luigi and his son Aurelio.

Other members of the de Laurentiis jury are Karlovy Vary artisitic director Eva Zaorolova, British film critic Derek Malcolm, Swedish producer Katinka Farago and German director Reinhard Hauff.

Venice has yet to announce the names of members on the Venice 59 jury, which will be headed by Gong Li.