CANNES, France (AP) — The 78th Cannes Film Festival opened Tuesday with expectations running high for what could be a banner edition.
All of the ingredients — an absurd number of stars, top-tier filmmakers, political intrigue — seem to be lined up for the French Riviera spectacular. Over the next 12 days, Cannes will play host to megawatt premieres including those of “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” and Ari Aster’s “Eddington.”
Things get underway Tuesday with an opening ceremony that drew Quentin Tarantino (who’ll pay tribute to Western filmmaker George Sherman on Wednesday), Eva Longoria, Heidi Klum and others to Cannes’ famous red carpet.
The opening day festivities included an honorary Palme d’Or for Robert De Niro, the opening night film, Amélie Bonnin’s French romance “Leave One Day,” a three-film salute to Ukraine and the introduction of the jury that will decide the Palme d’Or, headed by Juliette Binoche.
Cannes is coming off a 2024 festival that produced a number of eventual Oscar contenders, including “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance,” “Flow” and the best picture winner, “Anora. That film’s director, Sean Baker, returned Tuesday for the opening ceremony. (He’s a producer on a film in the Cannes parallel section Critics Week.)
Asked if he’s feeling the pressure this time around, festival director Thierry Frémaux said the only kind of pressure he believes in is in beer. (Beer on tap in France is “bière à la pression.”)
“Indeed last year was a beautiful year,” Frémaux said Monday. “But at the very time when I was with (journalists) as the festival started, we didn’t know if it was going to be a good year or not.”
Cannes is kicking off the same day Gérard Depardieu, one of France’s most famous actors, was found guilty of having sexually assaulted two women on a 2021 film set. In one of France’s most prominent #MeToo cases, Depardieu was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence. The 76-year-old has long been a regular presence at Cannes.
The introduction of Binoche’s jury
This year’s Cannes Film Festival, the premier international cinematic gathering, is also unspooling following U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for tariffs on movies made overseas. While Frémaux expressed sympathy for the cause of strengthening local movie production, he said it was too soon to comment on the still-unformed plans.
“I don’t know what to say, really, about that,” Binoche told reporters Tuesday when asked about the tariffs. “We can see that he’s fighting and trying in many different ways to save America and save his ass.”
Along with Binoche, the other eight jurors include Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong, who was unable to attend Cannes last year for the premiere of his Trump film “The Apprentice.” Strong referenced that film, which led to his first Oscar nomination, in his comments on the American president Tuesday.
“Truth is under assault,” said Strong. “Specifically at this temple of film, the role of film is increasingly critical because it can combat those forces in the entropy of truth, and can communicate truths, individual truths, human truths, societal truths, and affirm and celebrate our shared humanity.”
Berry, responding to Cannes’ new protocols on attire for the red carpet, said she had “an amazing dress” with a long train for the opening ceremony but will wear something else instead. Cannes has outlawed nudity and dresses with long trains for its evening premieres at the Palais.
“I had to make a pivot,” said Berry. “But the nudity part, I do think is probably also a good rule.”
A starry lineup, with geopolitics playing a co-starring role
Cannes will follow up Tuesday’s festivities with the return Wednesday of Tom Cruise. Three years after he brought “Top Gun: Maverick” to the festival, he’s back with the latest “Mission: Impossible” movie.
Twenty-two films will vie for Cannes’ top prize, the Palme d’Or, to be presented May 24. Those films include Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love,” Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” Oliver Hermanus’ “The History of Sound,” Julia Ducournau’s “Alpha” and Jafar Panahi’s “A Simple Accident.”
In Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, three prominent actors are making their directorial debuts: Harris Dickinson (“Urchin”), Kristen Stewart (“The Chronology of Water”) and Scarlett Johansson (“Eleanor the Great”).
Geopolitics are likely to play a starring role at Cannes, which is beginning by screening three 2025 Ukraine documentaries: “Zelensky,” Bernard-Henri Lévy’s “Notre Guerre” and The Associated Press-Frontline coproduction “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” by “20 Days in Mariupol” Oscar winner Mstyslav Chernov.
“This ‘Ukraine Day’ is a reminder of the commitment of artists, authors and journalists to tell the story of this conflict in the heart of Europe,” the festival said in a statement.
On Tuesday, more than 350 filmmakers, actors and others in the film industry — including Richard Gere, Pedro Almodovar, Javier Bardem, Viggo Mortensen and Mark Ruffalo, published an open letter in the French newspaper Libération and in Variety calling on cinema institutions to more forcefully respond to what they called “genocide in Gaza.”
ACID, a Cannes parallel section, includes the documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.” It’s about Fatma Hassona, a 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist who was killed the day after the selection of the documentary was announced in April.
“Why is it that cinema, a breeding ground for socially committed works, seems to be so indifferent to the horror of reality and the oppression suffered by our sisters and brothers?” the letter read.
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Jake Coyle has covered the Cannes Film Festival since 2012. To prepare for this year, he practiced eating crepes on the run and interviewed filmmakers on three continents who are in competition for Cannes’ top honor, the Palme d’Or.
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For more coverage of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/cannes-film-festival
