The Cannes Film Festival: a guide
The red-carpet steps, the Palme d’Or, the dress code for evening screenings and what the public can actually see: everything you need to know about the most famous film festival of all.
Every May, for about ten days, a small town on the Riviera becomes the world capital of cinema. The grand hotels on the Croisette are booked months in advance, the beaches turn into private lounges, and thousands of professionals come to see, buy and sell films. The Cannes Film Festival is at once a party, a showcase and a marketplace.
A thwarted birth
The idea of the Festival was born in the late 1930s, in reaction to the Venice Film Festival, then under the influence of the Fascist regime. A first edition was planned for September 1939, but the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war cancelled it. The Festival finally held its first real edition in 1946. It has taken place every year since, with a few exceptions, including the interrupted 1968 edition, amid the protests, and the cancelled 2020 edition, because of the pandemic.
The Palme d’Or
The top prize has borne this name since 1955, in homage to the palm trees on the town’s coat of arms. It is awarded by a jury of film personalities, chaired each year by a different figure. It has crowned films as different as Visconti’s The Leopard, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
The sections
The Festival is not just the official competition. It includes several parallel selections, among them Un Certain Regard, which showcases bolder works. Other events, such as the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, run at the same time, organised independently, and have revealed many directors.
The red-carpet steps
This is the image the whole world knows: the red carpet and the twenty-four steps of the Palais des Festivals, climbed every evening by the teams of the films in competition, under the flashbulbs. For the official evening screenings in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, evening dress is required: dinner suit and bow tie for men, a long or very dressy gown for women. The rules have relaxed in recent years, but the spirit remains.
Since 2018, the Festival has asked guests not to take selfies on the steps. The reason given is simple: the ascent was delaying screenings, and one comes to Cannes to see a film, not to film oneself. A lesson in manners that goes well beyond cinema.
Going without a badge
The Festival is above all reserved for accredited professionals. But the public is not excluded. Every evening, the Cinéma de la Plage offers free open-air screenings facing the sea, of restored classics or films from the selection. Some screenings are also open by invitation, distributed by the town or the organisers, and the Croisette itself, with its photographers, luxury cars and evening dress in broad daylight, is a permanent show.
The legendary addresses
The Carlton, the Martinez, the Majestic: the great hotels of the Croisette are inseparable from the Festival’s legend. The Carlton, with its two cupolas, appears in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. During the Festival, their bars and beaches become the places where films are negotiated and stars cross paths.
In Cannes, you do not climb the steps to be seen. You climb them to see a film.
