The 79th Cannes Film Festival opened Tuesday evening with its stars and 22 films vying for the Palme d’Or, during a ceremony celebrating cinema as an “act of resistance” which “transcends cultures”.
On the stage of the Palais des Festivals, in front of an audience of stars, actresses Gong Li and Jane Fonda kicked off the great Cannes event, which will lower the curtain on May 23 with the presentation of the Palme d’Or, awarded last year to “A Simple Accident” by dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
“Cinema has always been an act of resistance because we tell stories and stories represent what builds a civilization,” said the American Jane Fonda, while the Chinese Gong Li celebrated an art that “transcends languages, cultures and generations” and addresses “to what we all share, human emotions”.
From the Spaniard Pedro Almodovar to the American James Gray via the Romanian Cristian Mungiu, the competition will once again offer this year a panorama of cinema in a world in crisis, while welcoming an armada of stars (Penélope Cruz, Adam Driver, Barbra Streisand, Marion Cotillard…) on its red carpet.
– “Miraculous” –
To launch the fortnight during which around a hundred films will be screened, the festival awarded a Palme d’Honneur on Tuesday evening to Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director of the legendary “Lord of the Rings” trilogy who had never before been honored on the Croisette.
“It’s almost miraculous because I never would have imagined that I would win a Palme one day,” he declared when receiving the distinction from the hands of Elijah Wood, who played for him the character of the hobbit Frodo Baggins.
“I don’t make films that lend themselves to a Palme d’Or, so it’s really a surprise in every respect,” added the director of “King Kong” or “Bad Taste”, alongside the mistress of ceremonies, the French actress Eye Haïdara, who gave a political color to his opening speech.
Entering the stage in a music hall style to Claude Nougaro’s song “On the black screen of your sleepless nights”, the actress made a point of greeting television viewers all over the world, “well, everywhere where the internet has not been cut off, everywhere where artificial intelligence has not been substituted for reality.
Nestled in the middle of a declaration of love for the 7th art, this sentence echoes the debates which run through the Cannes festival around what cinema must and can say in the face of tensions and conflicts in the world.
“I don’t think we should separate art from politics, it’s a strange concept to want to oppose the two,” declared the president of the jury, the South Korean director, Park Chan-wook, during a press conference in the afternoon.
– “L’IA is there” –
Another member of the jury, the British Paul Laverty, Ken Loach’s favorite screenwriter, was more radical by taking advantage of the Cannes platform to denounce an era where “the mad lead the blind”.
“We see so much systematic violence, the genocide in Gaza and all these horrible conflicts,” he declared, then launching into a diatribe against Hollywood, which deserted the Croisette this year.
On this abrasive subject, the general delegate of the festival Thierry Frémaux tried on Monday to outline a middle path, ensuring that the Cannes festival is often asked to assume a role, to think about questions that do not directly concern it.
Another hot topic, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) also runs through the festival, which poses as a bulwark against a technology that is shaking up the cinema industry.
“AI is here,” declared American actress Demi Moore, also a member of the jury. “And fighting it is fighting a battle we will lose. So looking for ways to work with it seems to me a more valuable path to follow.”
On Wednesday, the race for the Palme d’Or will begin with the first screenings including “A Few Days in Nagi” by Japanese director Koji Fukada, and “The Life of a Woman” by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet.
publié le 12 mai à 21h07, AFP
