Cannes Film Festival 2022: Live Updates


CANNES, France — When Jeff Nichols first attended the Cannes Film Festival, he was a 21-year-old college student interning at the event’s American Pavilion. His days were mostly spent waiting at a desk, but Nichols would often pick up a gala ticket, don a tuxedo his mother had bought him, and sit high on the balcony of the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Every time he landed, he felt like he was on top of everything he wanted to do in life.

Since then, Nichols has returned to the festival with two films he directed: “Take Shelter,” starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain, and the Matthew McConaughey drama “Mud.” This year, he will serve as one of the jury members that determine the winner of the Palme d’Or. At a jury press conference on Tuesday, Nichols, now 43, declared the invitation a complete honor.

“I can guarantee that I will watch each of these movies with the same excitement as when I was 21,” Nichols said.

“You’ll have a better place,” moderator Didier Allouch added dryly.

Credit…Eric Gaillard/Reuters

An invitation to the Cannes Film Festival in its 75th anniversary is still highly desirable, even as the film industry has changed irrevocably in the two decades since Nichols first participated. Cannes sometimes seems like a throwback, as French theaters lobby the festival to keep streaming movies out of competition: a place where the big screen is so revered, where the outside world is consuming art films on much smaller screens.

The most significant concession Cannes has made to changing audience habits is the plethora of billboards and banners promoting TikTok, the short-form video app that is the official partner of this year’s festival, along the city’s main boulevard, the Croisette. Does this unity show that the festival is risking its cinematic bets, or is it a clever way for Cannes to reach a user base of over one billion young users?

Perhaps this is a reminder that Cannes will sell more than art films, even as some of these films – like Palme d’Or winner “Parasite” or last year’s hit “Worst Person in the World” – continue to strike a cultural chord. Cannes also sells glamor in the form of red carpet pictures beaming around the world. And the seamless image of Croisette, from which that red carpet sets off with a deep blue summer sky and an even richer blue sea, also provides the perfect launching pad for studio blockbusters: “Top Gun: Maverick” and Baz Luhrmann’s sparkly “ Elvis. ” will screen in Cannes this year alongside independent productions such as Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” in which Michelle Williams portrays an artist caring for a wounded pigeon.

After the 74th festival limited With the emergence of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, this year’s Cannes is turning into the ultimate festival. The number of journalists here has nearly tripled since last summer, parties once against the crowds and famous Cannes graduate directing the opening night movie “Final Cut” – French director Michel Hazanavicius, before his movie “The Artist” won the Best Picture Oscar in 2011 He debuted here.

Credit…Lisa Ritaine

Hazanavicius has gone through all the ups and downs that Cannes has to offer: three years after his victory with “The Artist”, he is back with the war drama “Search”, which has so sneeringly booed and whistled in the press. He barely survived the Croisette. Still, Hazanavicius couldn’t stay away: The zombie comedy “Final Cut” was originally supposed to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, but the movie returned to Cannes when Sundance went completely virtual.

“I feel like I was born in Cannes for ‘Artist’ but died for ‘Search’ in Cannes” Hazanavicius told IndieWire this week. “This is a game of poker. You come with your cards but you never know.”

And you come because when Cannes is connected, there is nothing else like it. Maybe that’s why the opening ceremony of the festival, which will be held on Tuesday night, was able to host a very important surprise guest: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emerged via satellite.. In his military fatigue, he spoke to the fashionably dressed crowd about the power of cinema to reshape how we think about war and the people who wage it. Zelensky, quoting Charlie Chaplin’s book “The Great Dictator,” said, “People’s hatred will pass, dictators will die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people.”

As she spoke, I thought of the jury press conference to the members of the jury, including actress-director Rebecca Hall and the head of the jury, Vincent Lindon, who starred in last year’s Palme d’Or winner “Titane.” The movie still retains any cultural priority in a world dominated by things like TikTok. Another juror, “The World’s Worst Person” director Joachim Trier, jumped in to say that filmmaking is “a very brilliant, progressive art form that we all love.” Then he grinned.

“People say it’s dying,” Trier said. “I don’t believe for a second.”



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