Restaurants, cafes and bars on the main streets and in the narrow streets are again constantly crowded with both festival participants and fans who come to the two-week-old spa town just to “be there”, to take a selfie with yachts at coast, with a poster on the red carpet, and with good luck with Tom Cruise or Woody Harrelson.
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However, those potential lucky people have to squeeze at the strictly guarded barricades for long hours, de facto from the morning until the evening of the filmmakers’ arrival at the Lumier Brothers, where the main competition and non-competitive hits such as Top Gun: Maverick take place.
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Of course, they are not sure anyway: although the stars know that such fifty autographs and selfie are among their basic duties, there are many more people interested. “But the world is not fair,” a father tells his 12-year-old son in the excellent competition film Armageddon Times. And this also applies to famous actors and actresses.
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For example, the beautiful Jennifer Connelly came to Top Gun: Maverick in addition to Cruise. While in other circumstances she herself would be the coveted star, besides Cruise she was almost as if she was not exposing her to photographers. Similarly, the lead characters in the favored film Triangel of Sadness remained in the shadow of Woody Harrelson, who plays a minor role in it.
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This is, of course, due to the interest of the media and fans, certainly not the fault of the organizers. They treat everyone exactly who they select for the main program, and it doesn’t matter if they are the creators of a Hollywood hit, the expected French premiere or a small Romanian film.
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The creator of one of them, Cristian Mungiu, recognized this when he received the Palme d’Or for his debut 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days in 2007 and has been invited to the main competition for the fourth time since then. His novel RMN is again a social drama, and even though it is not one of the best films, it was accepted to Cannes, because once someone really succeeds here, they are taken care of by the festival.
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The chairman of this year’s main international jury, the 62-year-old French actor Vincent Lindon, also spoke about this. He has over seventy roles, for which he received the Best Actor Award in Cannes seven years ago, but last year’s Titan, which won the Palme d’Or, caused a major breakthrough in his career.
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“My life is divided before and after Titan,” Lindon said in Cannes. “Suddenly, as if the world had just discovered me, it was as if he had suddenly discovered that I existed. I have an unprecedented number of offers and I am convinced that even the one to chair the Cannes jury is related to Titan’s response. “
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How it all began
It is widely believed that the Cannes Festival has existed since 1946. But in fact, the seed was sown eight years earlier. At that time, in 1938, the film powers of their time, including the French, met for the sixth time at the world’s oldest festival, Venice, Italy.
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But when the jury was to decide the winner, and had a clear favorite, under Hitler’s pressure, Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film Olympia eventually won.
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The decision provoked great outrage and the French, American and British filmmakers left, saying that they would never return to Venice.
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Philippe Erlanger, a diplomat, was among the French delegates at the time, and as soon as he returned, he began contacting the authorities, arguing that a competitive festival in France should be held urgently before the next autumn in Venice.
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He managed to gain the support of the state and foreign film productions, the deadline was set for September 1, 1939, the same day that Venice started. Among the many cities that applied for the festival, the pearl of the Côte d’Azur Cannes eventually won.
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Everything was ready in August, and Louis Lumiere, the father of cinematography, was to be the honorary chairman.
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But at the end of August it was clear that it was bad, most tourists fled Cannes, Hitler invaded Poland on September 1 and World War II broke out. The festival did not take place, but his idea did not fall asleep.
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The first year then took place on September 20, 1946. And although Cannes was the festival’s newborn, they presented the works of the greatest filmmakers of the time: George Cukor, Walt Disney, Robert Rossellini, Billy Wilder, Jean Renoir and others.
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Once again, politics entered the Cannes festival: in 1968, when there were also two Czech films in the competition – It’s Burning, my doll is Miloš Forman and About the Feast and Guests of Jan Němec.
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The festival began on May 11 with a screening of a restored copy of the famous South vs. North in 1939. However, riots culminated in Paris on the night of May 10, a general strike ensued and members of the Cannes jury resigned, several directors withdrew their films and the festival was canceled.
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“At that time, me or Forman had a huge chance of winning. And the paradox is that our friends Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Claude Lelouch, Claude Berri and Roman Polanski, who tore down the screen in revolutionary enthusiasm and achieved the cancellation of the festival, ruined it for us, “he recalled in Cannes during the filming of his last film Wolf from Královské Vinohrady with a view and a smile for Právo by Jan Němec.
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What we will see from Cannes here
The Cannes Film Festival continues to be the biggest film event of the year, although much has changed. For years, he did not win a film that later became a cult for several generations, such as Pulp Fiction in 1994.
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The festival tries to draw attention to films that have a strong humanistic message and that would probably fit in without this attention. And even with her, they are not blockbusters who would achieve huge attendance, but they will find their audience regularly.
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However, it also lists (apart from the main competition) films that keep stars, major agencies and TV crews going to Cannes, and which, like it or not, guarantee the festival the attention that can show the smaller and from the point of view of the arts and the audience, who expect more from the film than just entertainment, quality films.
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It wouldn’t be possible without the stars, be it Tom Hanks in the Elvis delegation or Julie Roberts, who promotes the fashion brand of which she is the ambassador. The world is changing and festivals with it, but they still have a significant place in the cultural world.
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We can also look forward to a number of films from this year’s program, some of which will undoubtedly be presented at the Karlovy Vary festival and some of which already have a Czech distributor.
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So perhaps the excellent company of the Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness and the Austrian historical drama Corsage (Flower on a Dress), which is an original look at the legendary Empress Elisabeth of Austria called Sisi, will not fit in the cinemas of the contemporary company Triangel of Sadness.
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We can also look forward to David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future or the continuation of St. Nicholas’ Patalia, and certainly a number of other films that are still waiting for the Czech distributor.
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