NEWSMAKERS Cinema
Netflix’s Tilda Swinton-starrer Okja booed in Cannes following techinal glitch
The Cannes Film Festival stopped the world premiere screening of Netflix’s contentious movie Okja on Friday after a technical glitch prompted sustained booing and slow clapping from the audience.
Okja, starring Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal, is one of the hottest movies at this year’s festival but divisive because US video-ondemand company Netflix has refused to screen it in French cinemas.
The film halted five minutes in after what the festival called “a technical incident”.
Audience member Ernesto Garratt, a journalist with the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, said the crowd started booing partly because the cinema had set the screen to the wrong ratio, cutting off the edges of the picture, but also partly because of the distribution dispute.
“They were booing for both reasons,” he said.
Staff adjusted the curtains at the side of the screen and restarted the film from the beginning shortly afterwards.
The audience booed the Netflix logo when it appeared on screen for a second time then settled down and applauded at the end.
“This incident was entirely the responsibility of the Festival’s technical service, which offers its apologies to the director, his teams, the producers and the audience at the showing,” the festival said in a statement. The premiere of the first Some critics had whistled at the start of Okja .
The screening giant has refused to show both its films in the running for Cannes’ top prize in French cinemas, sparking a bitter row which has overshadowed the start of the festival.
“Ha, this (film) is really not made for the cinema,” one spectator shouted as the screening was stopped for eight minutes to solve the technical hiccup.
Okja, about a young country girl who tries to save a beast created by an unscrupulous multinational company, had been touted as a possible winner of the Palme d’Or.
But a clash between Netflix and French cinema owners may have already put it, and the other film purchased by Netflix, The Meyerowitz Stories with Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, out of contention.
Spanish director and jury president Pedro Almodovar dropped a bombshell on Wednesday by suggesting they should not win anything.
He said he could not imagine “the Palme d’Or being given to a film, and then not being able to see that film on a large screen”. But his fellow jury member Will Smith took a strongly opposing view, singing Netflix’s praises to reporters.
Mr Smith said that he was not afraid of a fight and wanted to slam ‘my hand on the table and disagree with Pedro’.