Stars to contend with Tiktok swarm on the red carpet at Cannes

‘Arts organisations are becoming more skilled and creative in bringing their events to life on Tiktok’

LEADING lights of cinema are used to sashaying up the red carpet through a battery of flashing cameras but a new generation of stars are claiming their place under the glow of smart phones.

Cannes Film Festival has partnered with Tiktok, the video-sharing platform, and invited the platform’s young stars to swarm the red carpet at this year’s event as the social media site extends its influence over the arts. The 75-year-old film festival has become the latest institution to partner with Tiktok, which offers a vast young audience to venerable arts institutions and in turn receives publicity by being associated with key cultural events.

Tiktok celebrities will take their place alongside Hollywood stars such as Sir Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba on the Cannes red carpet year, and British successes on the social media app are set to create videos during the parade of glamour and beam them to their online followers. The British video creators Chewkz and Amelia Dimz, who have amassed millions of fans for their comic sketches and celebrity interviews in fast food restaurants respectively, will be among dozens of international Tiktok stars expected to attend and promote the festival when it opens with its first premiere today.

The presence of swarms of Tiktokers is likely to be a fixture of Riviera red carpets in the future after Cannes followed the Royal Shakespeare Company and Eurovision Song Contest in signing a partnership deal with the platform.

Rich Waterworth, Tiktok’s European general manager said: “I certainly expect that to continue to grow as Tiktok continues to grow, and as arts organisations become more skilled and more creative about how they can bring their events to life on Tiktok.”

Mr Waterworth has said that the platform wants to work with “more Cannes festivals” and added that Tiktok’s influence in the arts world is “mutually beneficial”, with organisations tapping into the vast young audience using the site, and the site in turn boosting its profile.

The arrangement allowing Tiktok creators to bustle around the red carpet will mean the approach to the Palais des Festival venue will be busier than in the slimmed-down, mid-pandemic event last year, when Cannes bosses Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure broke Covid protocol to kiss arriving stars.

The pair will greet actors and directors on the red carpet this evening when they arrive for the opening premiere of Z, a zombie-themed comedy.

The film was renamed Coupe for the festival following an outcry over its similarity to the “Z” symbol used by the Russian army in Ukraine.