Opening of the Cannes Film Festival, ambitions and contradictions of a world in images and movement

Installation of the official poster of the 76th Cannes Film Festival on the façade of the Palais des Festivals, in Cannes. The Cannes Film Festival will take place from 16 to 27 May. AFP - VALERY HACHE

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

9 min

Even before the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, this Tuesday evening, May 16, the first controversies are already shaking the Croisette: Johnny Depp, Maïwenn, Adèle Haenel... Among the 21 films in competition, seven were directed by women, including a French-Senegalese and a Tunisian. At first glance, no major political manifesto in sight for the Palme d'Or, but the world's greatest film event will inevitably be overtaken by the great challenges and upheavals of our time.

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The 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival will be a landmark. With 7 female directors out of 21 films, the number of women in the running for the Palme d'Or has set a record. With the Senegalese film Banel e Adama by Franco-Senegalese Ramata-Toulaye Sy and the Tunisian film Les Filles d'Olfa by Kaouther Ben Hania, the competition also marks the hope embodied by the new generation of African women directors.

► Read also: Who is the Franco-Senegalese Ramata-Toulaye Sy, in the running for the Palme d'Or?

On the women's side, the Festival seems to have been running flawlessly in recent years. Since the rise of the steps for parity, in 2018, of 80 directors, actresses and producers of the 50-50 collective, things have changed profoundly. From now on, the selection committees and the jury are parity. In 2019, French-Senegalese Mati Diop received the Grand Prix for her first feature film Atlantique. In 2021, with Titane, the French Julia Ducournau became the second director awarded with the Palme d'Or. Since 2023, the German Iris Knobloch is the first president in the history of the Festival.

► Read also: Cannes Film Festival 2023: breakthrough of "the new generation" of African directors

But the #MeToo movement continues to leave its mark. Provoked by the Weinstein scandal, an American producer long courted by Cannes, the movement reached its limits in 2020, with the consecration to the Césars of Romain Polanski, despite the fact that the director is still sought by Interpol and accused by several women of rape. That's when actress Adèle Haenel, 34, abruptly left the César ceremony. Three years later, in a letter published on the Télérama website, she publicly announced that she was leaving the world of cinema "to denounce the profession's widespread complacency vis-à-vis sexual aggressors, and, more generally, the way in which this milieu collaborates with the deadly racist ecocidal order of the world as it is".

Swedish director and president of the jury of the 76th Festival de Cannes Ruben Ostlund greets the General Delegate of the Festival de Cannes Thierry Fremaux, the French director of the Festival de Cannes Iris Knobloch, and the members of the jury: Zambian director Rungano Nyoni, Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, Argentine director Damian Szifron, American actress Brie Larson, French director Julia Ducournau, French actor Denis Menochet, American actor Paul Dano and French-Afghan screenwriter and director Atiq Rahimi on the balcony of the Grand Hyatt Cannes Hotel Martinez on the eve of the opening ceremony of the 76th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, May 15, 2023. AFP - LOIC VENANCE

Adèle Haenel's open letter

Thierry Frémaux's response at the press conference on May 15 in Cannes: "Probably for reasons of a certain radicality – she was forced to make this comment on Cannes which was obviously completely false, erroneous. She didn't think so when she came as an actress to the Festival – I hope she wasn't in a crazy contradiction. When she says that, I can just say: it's not true.

The director Justine Triet, in competition with Anatomy of a fall, declares at the microphone of RFI understand the anger of Adèle Haenel. "I find his attitude very beautiful. I am appalled by the lynching on the networks during his appearances. Adèle Haenel's political commitment is very precious and beautiful. After that, I think it's very interesting to be able to work from the inside. To be able to deconstruct things from within. I want Adèle Haenel to take a camera and film her commitment. I think we have to resist. You have to produce political images, inscribe your cinema, and exist in cinema. Afterwards, I am extremely touched by Adèle Haenel's words and I think they reflect many people in society and not only in cinema. People who can no longer of this world and who want to change this world.

The anger of the social movement and the Palace of Versailles

Since Adèle Haenel's letter, have the Cannes Film Festival and the world of cinema been surrounded by adversaries and enemies? No. There, where Emmanuel Macron failed, Thierry Frémaux is succeeding brilliantly. In March, the French president had to postpone King Charles III's visit to the Palace of Versailles to avoid further inflaming the social movement. This Tuesday, May 16, if all goes well, the director general of the Cannes Film Festival will receive with his calm judoka and the splendour of the red carpet the beautiful world of cinema at the Palais des Festivals. On the huge screen of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the nobility of the 7th art will see a Johnny Depp transformed into Louis XV in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles.

If all goes well. Because, ahead of the Festival, the CGT-spectacle union had announced possible power cuts in Cannes to continue the fight against the pension reform... Meanwhile, some are offended by the presence of Johnny Depp, who became persona non grata in Hollywood, after accusations of violence against his last wife. Another incident makes the story of the opening film even more crisp. The director Maïwenn, who plays in Jeanne du Barry herself the mistress of the king, has just confessed to having physically assaulted the journalist Edwy Pleynel. The latter is president of Mediapart, an online investigative newspaper that has looked into suspicions of rape against the former king of French cinema, Luc Besson, with whom Maïwenn once married at the age of 16... To complete the picture, the film is co-financed by Saudi Arabia, a new player in the film industry, despite the appalling scandal of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, tortured, murdered and dismembered in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a commando of Saudi agents.

A woman walks on the beach in front of the Cinéma de la plage before the opening of the 76th Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from 16 to 27 May 2023. AFP - VALERY HACHE

Commitment and discretion

Within the Festival, so far, no overtly political commitment is displayed this year. Despite the continued and reinforced oppression of women in Iran and Afghanistan, no symbolic gesture – as once the empty seat for Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi – is envisaged. After the spectacular invitation, last year, of two Ukrainian films in the official selection and of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the opening of the Festival, the visible support for Ukraine is reduced this year to a small badge on the lapel of Thierry Frémaux's jacket. And the cry "No War", pushed last year by Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov in competition, seems to have given way to a tacit agreement not to invite any more Russian films in the official selection of the Festival.

► Read also: Cannes Film Festival 2023: the list of films in competition

The same discretion is observed at the level of ecological commitment. In 2021, the shock of the Covid-19 epidemic gave birth to the "Cinema for the Climate" action at the heart of the Festival. A program of six documentaries and a fiction to "symbolically embody this ecological commitment". This year, the subject seems to have become too anxiety-provoking for the official selection. The festival simply communicates on the reduction of carbon emissions and waste at the event site and on the mandatory environmental contribution for festival-goers. The €1,340,000 raised so far has been invested in local, national and international green projects. It remains to tackle the difficult question of film production or the number of landings and take-offs of planes at Cannes airport during the month of the Festival (estimated in 2018 by an ecological association at 1,700).

Confidence and attendance regained

Meanwhile, business is picking up in the film industry and the Covid-19 crisis seems almost forgotten. With 19 million admissions in April 2023, the number of spectators in cinemas in France exceeded the monthly average of the years 2017-2019. And Thierry Frémaux revealed that, despite the 13,000 professional accredited (an increase of 15%), he had to refuse this year 10,000 requests for accreditations.

The general delegate and his new president, Iris Knobloch, are even optimistic about their fight against the supremacy of platforms. Long mocked for his absolute refusal to welcome Netflix films that are not first programmed in French cinemas, Thierry Frémaux proudly announced the selection of Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese's new masterpiece produced by Apple, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in the title roles. And the platform has committed through Paramount to release the film first in theaters in France before putting it on Apple TV. For the Festival's management, this is by no means an exception, but rather a turning point. And Apple and Amazon have announced that they want to invest $1 billion a year in film production. "The old debate of opposing platforms and cinemas is no longer relevant," promises Iris Knobloch for whom the Cannes Film Festival must "remain the absolute artistic reference of world cinema".

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