KICK THE CANNES
#MeToo shakeup for film festival
On the cusp of the 71st Cannes Film Festival, Europe’s showcase event for cinema finds itself, unlike it has in decades, in tumult. This year’s selections, including three female directors among the 21 Palme d’Or contenders, have done little to quell pleas for more female storytellers at the world’s most prestigious film festival. Questions of gender equality are especially pointed at Cannes, which for the last 20 years had been a seaside playground for Harvey Weinstein, long one of the festival’s most ubiquitous operators. Cannes remains perhaps the most supreme and heightened realm of moviedom, but its rarified stature has been increasingly challenged by both the era of #MeToo and the age of Netflix. As Jessica Chastain put it last year when she saw 20 films as a Cannes juror: “The one thing I really took from this experience is how the world views women, from the female characters that I saw represented.
And it was quite disturbing to me, to be honest.” Festival director Thierry Fremaux, who called the Weinstein revelations an “earthquake” for Cannes, has promised this year heralds “a great renewal.” He has stocked the competition lineup with eight first-timers.
He has banned selfies from the red carpet, irritated by their interruption to the highly orchestrated, star-studded procession on the most famous red carpet next to the Oscars. He has, after a public scuffle, accepted the absence of Netflix films from the festival after being unable to secure theatrical releases for its entries.
And he has brought “Star Wars” back to Cannes for the megawatt premiere of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (photo inset). Yet some say it’s not enough for Cannes to change its clocks. Critics says the festival has lagged in gender equality (only one female director, Jane Campion, has won the Palme), and that Cannes is overly in the thrall of male auteurs.
Cannes has regularly been home to Roman Polanski (he premiered his “Based on a True Story” at Cannes last year), even while other institutions — like the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — have distanced themselves from the director. This year’s jury is headed by Cate Blanchett, an outspoken member of the Time’s Up movement. Her jury of nine includes Ava DuVernay, Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux and Burundian singer Khadja Nin. Among the films vying for the Palme are Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War,” and “Capernaum,” by Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki. Asked if she was proud to be one of the three women in competition, Labaki replies: “I’m proud but I’m proud to be there, full stop.”
“This is recognition for my work as a filmmaker, not for my work as a female filmmaker,” says Labaki. “For me, I don’t think that the choice should be made because of that. It has been irritating to me to think that I’m in Cannes because I’m a woman filmmaker and that now, with everything that’s happening, the world has decided to put females in the spotlight.”