Cannes Film Festival 2022: Big-Budget Films, Controversy, and Celebrity Galore

The event will last 11 days and, according to the AFP agency, will be visited by an estimated 35,000 people. “There’s a new Indiana Jones, there’s a new movie from director Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio, and another Wes Anderson movie starring just about every Hollywood star you can think of, plus a who’s who of art directors,” Scott Roxborough selects from the program. head of the European branch of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Star actors Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Sean Penn, Alicia Vikander, singer The Weeknd and director Pedro Almodóvar will personally visit the festival on the French Riviera. In addition to Martin Scorsese, Nanni Moretti, Aki Kaurismäki, Ken Loach and Wim Wenders will present their new films here.

Tuesday’s gala evening was followed by a ceremonial screening of the opening film called Jeanne du Barry. In this historical drama, he played the French king Louis XV. fifty-nine-year-old Johnny Depp. For the Hollywood actor, this is the first major role since he won the closely watched court case with his ex-wife Amber Heard last year.

Festival director Thierry Fremaux had to defend the decision to start the show with Depp in front of critics. “I respect freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom to behave within the framework of what the law allows. If Johnny Depp was prohibited by law from acting in films, or this particular title was prohibited, then we don’t have to deal with the matter,” argued Fremaux. “I’m really not interested in his trial, which is constantly denied by the media. I’m interested in only one thing: Depp as an actor,” the director of the AFP agency is quoted as saying.

However, a campaign is spreading on social networks that criticizes the festival for “celebrating thugs for 76 years”. This internet protest was organized by supporters of Amber Heard. Depp had a falling out with her over mutual accusations of domestic violence. The situation is not helped by the fact that the opening film with Depp was made by French director Maïwenn, who criticized the #MeToo movement and is now facing a lawsuit over how she spat in the face of a journalist in a Paris restaurant last month.

There are 21 films competing for the main prize, the Palme d’Or, at Cannes, seven of which are directed by women. This is the most in the history of the festival. The latest addition to the program was the film Homecoming by sixty-six-year-old French director Catherine Corsini, who for a change she faced allegations that she was insufficiently sensitive to minor actors during the filming of sensitive scenes, including a fifteen-year-old girl performing in an erotic scene.

This year, American cinema is represented by Wes Anderson with his sci-fi tribute called Asteroid City, which stars Hollywood stars Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks, or Todd Haynes with the romance May December. Instead, it relies on the performances of actresses Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.

The jury is chaired by Swedish director Ruben Östlund, who himself won the Palme d’Or twice, last year with the film Triangle of Sorrow and six years ago with Square. Other judges are the American actress Brie Larson known as Captain Marvel or the French director Julia Ducournau, also a winner of the Palme d’Or.

Outside of the competition, the festival will present the fifth and probably the last part of the saga of adventure films Indiana Jones and the Tool of Fate. It has its world premiere on Thursday, directed by James Mangold instead of series creator Steven Spielberg. After 15 years, the main role was again played by Harrison Ford, who will also receive the Palme d’Or in Cannes for his lifetime contribution to cinematography.

The most anticipated titles of the year also include Killers of the Flower Moon, a period film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert de Niro, Brendan Fraser and Jesse Plemons. It takes place in the 1920s and tells the story of how the FBI investigated the murders of members of the Osage Indian tribe.

For all the glitz of the red carpet, the Cannes festival does not take place in isolation from the problems of the real world. French unions threatened on Tuesday morning to turn off the power at a ceremony to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform. In response, the organizers preferred to connect five backup generators in the adjacent parking lot.

According to journalist Scott Roxborough, there is indeed a fear among the organizers that the protests that are raging in France will not show too much at the festival. But of course people have the right to protest and no one can limit freedom of speech, adds Roxborough. “If this means that the red carpet will not be spotless this year, then nothing can be done,” shrugs the journalist.

Actress Helen Mirren on the red carpet. | Photo: ČTK / AP

The festival takes place shortly after the screenwriters’ strike began in Hollywood, which can paralyze the film industry for a long time. According to the journalist Roxborough, many participants of the festival will think of her, but she will not significantly affect the course of the event itself.

“It will just be a slightly more complicated situation for artists who are in multiple roles at the same time, for example Martin Scorsese. He will only be able to talk about his new film as a director, but not as a screenwriter, because he is on strike as a screenwriter,” the journalist points out.

The festival will last until May 27. And as the ČTK agency adds, two short films from Prague’s FAMU will also compete in the La Cinef section: Electra by director Darja Kaščeeva and Petr Pylypčuk’s drama entitled Osmý den. At the show, the Prague School will present a non-competitive film in the Cannes Focus Script program for projects in development. It is Gone by the Polish director Piotr Jasiński from the foreign department of FAMU International.