MUMBAI: The 69th Venice International Film Festival has asked producer-director Shekhar Kapur to chair the Jury for Luigi de Laurentiis Venice Award for Debut Film sections of the festival.

The festival will run from 29 August to 8 September.

"Shekhar Kapur is not only the Indian filmmaker who enjoys the greatest international prestige - which he earned for the success of the films he made in Bollywood in the early stages of his career and later for having directed some of the major English and American productions - he is also a refined intellectual humanist interested in social issues," the festival site read.

He made his directing debut with Masoom and also also directed Mr. India. Later, he went on to win critical acclaim for Bandit Queen in the year 1994. His Hollywood film Elizabeth received as many as seven Oscars.

In 2006, Kapur formed Liquid Comics and Virgin Animation, an entertainment company focused on creating new stories and characters for a global audience. In an unusual role, Kapur provided the voice of Mahatma Gandhi in the Charkha Audio books title of The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

He was also a member of the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.