Imagine you are a young filmmaker walking the coveted red carpet of the world’s première festival for the first time. And getting thrown out. Not over a real infraction – think showing your derriere and mooning the photographers or throwing slime or foie gras – but for wearing…wait for it…moccasins!

This is what happened to an Indigenous Canadian producer who decided to honor his culture by pairing a perfectly Cannes-befitting tuxedo with traditional shoes. Kelvin Redvers, a member of the Dene Nation and a producer from Vancouver was in line for the world première of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s Les Amandiers when red carpet security rudely stopped him: “A fairly aggressive security guard got fed up, got right in my face and said, ‘You need to leave now. Leave now. Leave now. Leave now. Leave!’” Redvers told Variety. “I was very confused and hurt; I felt belittled. I was being treated like a criminal for just trying to wear my formal traditional wear.”

Cannes has a sordid history when it comes to this kind of behavior and has previously often enforced the unwritten rule of women not being allowed to wear anything but heels. Full disclosure: the writer of these lines had herself a very unpleasant encounter with red carpet security a few years ago. (I was wearing flat sandals and got almost physically removed until I pointed to my broken ankle, and they reluctantly backed off, snorting something in French that I thankfully did not understand.) Similar incidents were experienced by many attendees over the years including some major stars – one thing can be said for the French: they do not differentiate between the rich and famous and the plebeians.

A group of women in their fifties was turned away at the 2015 world premiere of Carol for now wearing “tall enough” shoes. This prompted an outcry on social media calling the festival everything from discriminatory to ageist and making festival director Thierry Fremaux deny that high heels were an official rule. Well, then, you may say. Except that it kept happening. Until some huge stars staged clear acts of defiance. Julia Roberts went barefoot in 2016 and Kristen Stewart ditched her Louboutins at the BlacKkKlansman premiere directly in front of photographers’ lenses two years later. Since then, no run-ins between flat-heeled guests and rude security have been reported. The editor of a magazine however was also accosted last week for wearing a white instead of a dark tuxedo, regardless of the fact that other men were doing the same.

But let’s put this all in perspective: forcing women to wear heels – where is Billy Porter when you need him? – is misogynist in this day and age. Keeping an indigenous producer out is downright discriminatory: “I was hoping to wear an example of something that would be formal for my culture, which was a beautiful pair of moccasins that were actually beaded by my sister,” Kelvin Redvers said, “I was pretty excited to wear those.” And so he should be. On a Hollywood carpet, he would have been applauded for his sense of style.

Cannes, with its still very sad percentage of female directors, has a lot to improve on. You cannot take issue with moccasins when you allow semi- to almost fully-naked starlets to twirl towards the Lumiere Theatre. If that goes, anything goes.