2021 Cannes International Film Festival

Cary Grant brought a taste of Hollywood to the 1964 Cannes with Father Goose, in which he starred with Leslie Caron. In 2004 Cannes celebrated Grant in what would have been his 100th birthday (he had died in1986) with a premiere screening of the documentary Cary Grant: A Class Apart, with his widow Babara Grant in attendance.

For a full year and a half, Cannes, the beautiful little town in the South of France was asleep, like a fairy tale princess. The villain: Covid-19.

In 1983, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver made the pilgrimage to the Croisette to support Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously. The drama, set in mid-60s Indonesia, a country in a political crisis that would soon overthrow president Sukarno.

When Thierry Frémaux recently spoke to HFPA journalists, he touched on a wide range of subjects, from cinema to his twin lifelong passion for Judo and cycling.   Especially close to his heart are the two festivals he directs: the Lumière Film Festival, devoted to classic and restored films, which is held in Lyon each October, and of course the Cannes Film festival.

The Cannes Film Festival may have moved from its pre-COVID May dates and will instead take place in person from July 6-17, but the return to tradition was apparent when festival president Pierre Lescure and director Thierry Fremaux announced the line-up of 63 films from the Normandie Theater in Paris with the poignant opening statement: “Cinema is not dead”. A French-made (albeit English-language) film will open the 74th annual edition on July 6 at the Palais du Festival.