Once the famous red carpet is rolled out from the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, the world’s premier film shindig will dish out its customary two-week movie extravaganza – with an impressive line-up of films stacked with celebrated auteurs and emerging talent.
True to form, Wes Anderson will alone provide the requisite red-carpet glamour, his “The Phoenician Scheme” uniting the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray.
But darker plotlines abound, reflecting a backdrop of turmoil in the industry and beyond.
A glitzy showcase for the movies, the Cannes Film Festival likes to see itself as the guardian of the big screen. It has a history of facing down challenges to the film industry, from the rise of streaming platforms to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The US president has now added a potential trade war to the industry’s growing list of concerns.
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Trump sent shockwaves through Hollywood and the global film world when he announced on May 4 that all movies “produced in Foreign Lands” would face 100% tariffs. The US president accused other nations of “stealing the movies and movie-making capabilities from the United States”, warning that America’s movie industry was dying “a very fast death”.
While short on detail, Trump’s announcement was enough to further darken an already tricky commercial outlook for big-screen owners and film producers.
It came just days after Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, whose streaming behemoth has been locked for years in a battle with Cannes over the future of film, warned that that cinema-going was “an outmoded idea for most people”.
Read moreFor the benefit of movie lovers, ‘Cannes and Netflix should kiss and make up’
‘Overseas extortion’
Both Trump and Netflix have EU regulations that protect and promote European cinema in their crosshairs.
The regulations take many forms but typically include measures such as taxing cinema tickets to fund independent filmmakers, quotas for European or non-English-language productions, or forcing major studios to fund domestic productions.
The US president has taken aim at what he calls “overseas extortion”, with a particular mention of laws that “require American streaming services to fund local productions”.
In France, American streaming platforms Netflix, Amazon and Disney have to invest in French-language films or series in order to operate in the country – a model Cannes has vowed to defend.
In the run-up to this edition, festival organisers signalled their continued support for a system that helps promote domestic film production and uphold France’s standing as the European cinema powerhouse.
“The good health of the French film sector shows that this system is working well,” festival head Iris Knobloch told reporters last week. “There is always some jealousy, and I hope this system will endure.”
Crossing borders
The prospect of Trump’s trade wars spreading to the film industry risks destabilising a sector that is highly globalised and depends on open trade.
The border-crossing nature of cinema is especially evident at Cannes, where filmmakers come from across the globe to showcase their films while dealmakers work through the night to sell finished films or packaged productions to various territories.
“Film is global and easily crosses the borders of any country or culture,” said Chie Hayakawa, one of 22 filmmakers vying for the Palme d’Or this year, with her competition debut “Renoir”.
“That’s what special about Cannes,” the Japanese helmer, who first came to the festival with a student project a decade ago, told AP.
As the movies grow more international, the global launchpad of Cannes has become only more central to the larger film ecosystem. Recent editions of Cannes have produced a string of Oscars laureates, including recent best-picture winners, “Parasite” and “Anora”.
This year’s line-up of films was selected from some 3,000 movies submitted from more than 150 different countries – a record for Cannes that underscores the festival’s ever-growing appeal.
Some observers say the increasingly international nature of film production makes Trump’s tariff plans simply unworkable. They note that major movies produced by US studios are increasingly shot outside America.
On Wednesday, in an early festival highlight, Tom Cruise will showcase “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”, the last instalment in a franchise that has seen him sneak into the Vatican, climb up Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and blow up part of the Kremlin – among other iconic settings.
Politics, on and off the screen
Cruise, who triumphed on the Croisette three years ago with his long-awaited Top Gun sequel, will be hoping to repeat the formula that propelled “Maverick” to $1.49 billion at the global box office. He is expected to steer clear of politics and controversy when he hits the red carpet in Cannes.
But there will be plenty of Trump critics at the festival, which last year infuriated the then Republican nominee by screening “The Apprentice”, a deeply unflattering portrait of Trump and his early real estate career.
Hollywood legend Robert De Niro, a fierce critic of the US president, will receive an honorary Palme d’Or on the opening night and address festival-goers in a rare Q&A session the following day, one year shy of the 50th anniversary of “Taxi Driver” winning the top prize in Cannes.
Fellow New Yorker Spike Lee, who urged the world to “wake up” over Trump during an incendiary Cannes press conference in 2018, is also back at the festival with his latest film “Highest 2 Lowest”, starring Denzel Washington.
Read moreHalle Berry, writer Leila Slimani to join women-majority Cannes film festival jury
While politics are ostensibly banned from Cannes’ famous red carpet, geopolitics typically course through the festival.
This year’s main competition includes works by Iranian filmmakers Saaed Roustaee and Jafar Panahi, whose 2011 film “This Is Not A Film” was smuggled to the festival on a USB stick hidden inside a cake. Both directors have faced jail sentences for their past works.
Cannes veteran Sergei Loznitsa of Ukraine returns with “Two Prosecutors”, while his war-torn country is the subject of three films screened on the festival’s opening day, including a documentary on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The war still raging in Gaza will be high on the agenda, both on and off the screen, a year after former jury head Cate Blanchett caused a stir on the red carpet with a dress that many saw as a nod to the Palestinian flag.
The festival’s ACID sidebar will screen Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi’s documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk”, about 25-year-old Gaza photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed in an Israeli air strike a day after she learned of the film’s Cannes selection.
Gazan twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser will show “Once Upon a Time in Gaza”, a tale of two friends peddling drugs from a falafel shop in 2007, while Israeli government critic Nadav Lapid returns with his latest film “Yes”, about a jazz musician tasked with setting to music a new national anthem in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.
The 78th Cannes Film Festival runs through May 13-24.
(With AP, AFP)
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