Alexander Payne has been named president of the international jury of the 82nd Venice Film Festival, heading the group who decides winners of the Golden Lion for best film, the two Silver Lions, the Volpi Cup for best actor and actress and several other awards. The festival takes place Aug. 27 – Sept. 6.

“It’s an enormous honor and joy to serve on the jury at Venice,” Payne said in a Monday statement. “Although I share a filmmaker’s ambivalence about comparing films against one another, I revere the Venice Film Festival’s nearly 100-year history of loudly celebrating film as an art form. I couldn’t be more excited.”

Festival director Alberto Barbera added, “Alexander Payne belongs to the small circle of filmmakers-cinephiles whose passion for cinema is fueled by knowledge of films of the past and curiosity about contemporary cinema, without boundaries or barriers of any kind. These qualities — along...