13-05-2025
As Cannes 2025 Readies for Opening Night, Political Headwinds Blow
Despite best efforts to talk about movies at Cannes, with the sprawling official selection yet to be screened, at early press conferences festival director Thierry Fremaux and his Competition jury batted back questions about the state of the world today. Queries swung from Gerard Depardieu's #MeToo conviction, to showing three films from Ukraine and banning Russia from the festival, which from its founding in 1939 was 'predicated on liberty,' said Fremaux.
'People take risks to make films,' he said. 'The most important thing is not someone's safety, but making a film. The festival is political when the artists are political. Jafar Panahi [Iranian Competition entry 'A Simple Accident'] is prepared to risk going to prison.'
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As to the current political winds prevailing in America and elsewhere, Fremaux said, 'The cinema requires a lot of funding. It is often the first target. Around the world we need to defend cinema.' As for President Donald Trump's threatened tariffs on films produced overseas, Fremaux feels it is too early to know what will actually happen. 'Maybe we should talk in a year,' he said. 'The cinema always finds a way of existing and reinventing itself. Here in Cannes we wouldn't like the American cinema to cease to be strong.'
While Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche deflected a question about Gaza, she took on President Trump's threatened tariffs on films, and she eventually revealed her true feelings. 'We understood that from the beginning that President Trump was trying to protect his country but for us, we have a very strong community of filming on our continent,' she said. 'We can see that he's fighting, and he's trying in many, many different ways to save America and save his ass.'
She continued, 'The world is going into places that are very dangerous. And so the more we're going close to those spaces of danger, we need art in order to survive and have a view that gives us gives us hope and connection between each other.'
Juror Jeremy Strong addressed playing his Oscar-nominated role in 'The Apprentice,' which played Cannes last year without him, as he was on Broadway. 'Roy Cohn, I see essentially as the progenitor of fake communities and alternative facts, and we're living in the aftermath of what he created,' he said. 'This time where truth is under assault, where truth is becoming an increasingly endangered thing. The role of stories, of cinema art, but here specifically at this temple of film, the role of film is increasingly critical, because it can combat those forces and the entropy of truth, and can communicate truths, individual truths, human truths, societal truths, and affirm and celebrate our shared humanity. What I'm here doing this year is in a way, a counterbalance to what Roy Cohn was doing last year.'
Fremaux's main message is how Cannes has the power to propel even small indies like 'The Apprentice' and Sean Baker's 'Anora' (Neon) into the world — and eventually even win Oscars. 'Things got going, the adventure begins in Cannes,' he said. 'It's a special festival. A film can show in Cannes in May and still be alive in March the following year. American distributors and producers who like Cannes, like Neon, know how to make the best of it.'
Last year, Oscar winners 'Emilia Pérez' and 'Flow' also launched at Cannes. And the increasingly international cast of the Academy voters has elevated foreign-language films that gain a profile at Cannes.
Much of that buzz is generated for the prize-winners like Palme d'Or-winning 'Parasite,' 'Anatomy of a Fall,' and 'Anora,' all from Neon. And that comes down to the Competition jury.
Jury duty began Tuesday, May 13 for this year's Cannes Film Festival competition panelists, led by Binoche, who first came to the festival 14 years ago. She presides over a nine-member jury composed of actors Halle Berry, Alba Rohrwacher, and Jeremy Strong, directors Hong Sang Soo, Dieudo Hamadi, Payal Kapadia, and Carlos Reygadas, and French-Moroccan diplomat/journalist Leïla Slimani. The winners tend to be films that move the jurors emotionally, which is why the Dardennes have won twice.
This year, Fremaux is proud to host the Dardennes for the ninth time in Competition, Julia Ducourneau's second ('Alpha'), as well as American auteurs Wes Anderson's fourth Cannes entry ('The Phoenician Scheme') and Richard Linklater's second ('Nouvelle Vague'). What will the prize contenders be? 'Sentimental Value' from Norway third-timer Joachim Trier could fly, along with Oliver Hermanus's gay romance 'The History of Sound' (MUBI).
'We'll watch the films together,' said Binoche. 'And after that, it's this connection that is beyond thinking that will make a special result.'
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