I spent a week in Miami for Spring Break: months of Ithacan weather left me pining for palm trees and warmer climate. Grateful as I was for the respite, my mind couldn’t help but wander to a place across the Atlantic, one that would offer a little more to enjoy: Cannes, France, the picturesque town on the Cote d’Azur, where one of the world’s most feted film festivals will take place in one month. Sunshine, the beach and movies — that would make my perfect springtime excursion.
Cannes Film Festival, now welcoming its 78th edition, is the first major event for this year’s upcoming cinematic offerings. Cannes marries worldwide reach to first-class publicity; its top category, “In Competition,” treats films submitted from countries anywhere on the globe to their own red carpet (famously armed with photographers), a press conference and a chance at the crown jewel on the palazzo, the Palme d’Or, the prize for best film. During the two-week schedule, makers and buyers attend a blitz of galas and bazaars to strike deals for distribution overseas. Rounding up with a dozen concurrent minor sections, the festival presents the premier opportunity for over a hundred films each year to make their debut to the international stage. For an avid moviegoer, Cannes is the place to see your favorite filmmakers make a very glamorous splash.
The conspicuous extravagance of Cannes is unusual for a film festival that pledges a strong allegiance to auteur cinema. In the 1960s, the young festival served as an epicenter of the French New Wave, premiering films by Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda and François Truffaut. The parallel section Critics’ Week, founded in 1962, began a tradition of showcasing novice filmmakers. Before the current wave of international attention at the Oscars, Cannes has long shepherded and consecrated auteurs that challenge the landscape of global cinema. During the past thirty years, Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Haneke, Apichatpong Weersathekul and more have walked the steps from the Croisette to the Palmarès for their big prizes. By the time Hollywood notices, these astounding directors already have a few more triumphs under their belts.
That is not to say Cannes is a haughty rival to the Oscar circuit across the continent. The festival has always been a playground for Hollywood elites, and in recent years it has pushed for a sweeter camaraderie. The over-the-top rites are no longer reserved for films in the category “In Competition.” A new section — cheekily named “Out of Competition” — hosts blockbusters such as Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. These films now enjoy Cannes pedigree ahead of their box office conquests; this year, the latest installment from the Mission Impossible franchise will receive special screening. The upper echelons of the festival are likewise increasingly infiltrated with Hollywood personnel. Academy Award winners Greta Gerwig and Brie Larson staffed the jury for the headline section, and the honorary Palme d’Or, also a recent invention, has sought to fete both directors and actors alike that missed the regular prizes, with the list including Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster and Harrison Ford.
Personally, I find the introduction of blockbusters to be an unnecessary distraction to the films that uphold the festival. Commercial juggernauts hardly need more attention. Their outsized presence puts Cannes at risk of homogeneity with festivals that follow, which are already numerous and repetitive. Though Hollywood is an integral component of global cinema, courting its elites muddle the festival’s vision. Cannes presents a specific point-of-view, which is not best suited for fashioning a compendium of cinematic achievement. Its cultural currency lies in pushing the needle on filmmaking in the present, not enshrining a past. Yet in a post-pandemic world where art institutions are still struggling to find footing, perhaps Cannes is facing certain pressures. Regardless, Hollywood commotion worked in the favor of selected films, whose hopes for an Oscar breakthrough is ever rising. Since Parasite’s stunning victory five years ago, Palme d’Or winners have become major players in Hollywood’s award season.
Cinephiles will be pleased to know that this year’s festival will still feature a rich array of auteurs up for the Cannes spotlight. I am personally anticipating a few titles, films made by directors well-acquainted with the festival and hopeful for the Palme d’Or. Emblem of twenty-first century eccentricity Wes Anderson may return with The Phoenician Scheme, an espionage period drama set in the 1940s. Anderson could extend his oeuvre of perfectly calibrated tragi-dramedies including The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, which won him film festival (and TikTok) fame. Emergent auteur Bi Gan, a surrealist in the lineage of Wong Kar-Wai and Tsai Ming-liang, enlists leading muse of Taiwanese cinema Shu Qi for Resurrection, a sci-fi about a woman in a desolate future, trapped in dreams of the past. The premise is clearly reminiscent of Shu’s own career highlight, the time-hopping period-meets-fantasy Three Times. Seven years ago, Bi brought the ravishing Long Day’s Journey Into Night to Cannes, which also followed an enigmatic woman played by the great Tang Wei. Master of the American character study Kelly Reichardt, is also set to premiere her upcoming film The Mastermind. Billed as a heist movie during the Vietnam War, it stars Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim, two arthouse starlets in vogue. While late to recognize the understated filmmaker, Cannes hosted Reichardt’s previous film in competition, after the international breakthrough of First Cow in 2019.
The 78th Cannes Film Festival is set to take place from May 13 to 24. Hollywood fanfare notwithstanding, the festival will certainly not fail to direct its fame to deserving filmmaking talents . Some outstanding films will make the final cut and kickstart a year of moviegoing in the wealth of global cinema. I’m already thinking about a second spring break at Cannes. And to be in the presence of this year’s jury president, Juliette Binoche… wouldn’t it be cinematic heaven?
Aerien Huang is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jh2664@cornell.edu.
