Cannes holds out olive branch in row with Netflix
The Cannes film festival said on Tuesday that it was still in talks with Netflix despite the platform’s dramatic withdrawal of its films last week.
Director Thierry Fremaux praised the streaming giant’s bosses as “people of taste who love cinema”, and said he was ready to heal the rancorous split that saw Netflix reportedly pull five films in the running for the venerable world’s top festival next month.
Fremaux riled Netflix by banning movies that are not first released in French cinemas from the competition after cinema owners protested last year at the inclusion of two of its films, Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories.
The Silicon Valley giant complained that it was being unfairly targeted because under French law, films cannot be streamed until three years after their cinematic release.
But Fremaux denied that there was a “war” between them despite harsh words from Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos last week, who claimed its films were being “treated disrespectfully”.
“Netflix are cinephiles, people of taste who love cinema, and who have made possible what was never done before,” Fremaux told French radio.
“Again last night I wrote to my friends at Netflix so that we might find a solution. They find our love for [watching films in] cinemas hard to understand,” he added.
Fremaux also went out of his way to praise the platform for financing the completion of Orson Welles’ legendary unfinished opus, The Other Side Of The Wind, which the late American director began in 1970 and was still working on until his death in 1985.
Netflix, however, was with stinging in its criticism of Cannes and Fremaux, claiming that “the festival has chosen to celebrate distribution rather than the art of cinema”.
“It is not a coincidence that Thierry also banned selfies this year,” Sarandos added, in a biting reference to Fremaux outlawing them on the red carpet.
“I don’t know what other advances in media Thierry would like to address.”