2022 Cannes International Film Festival

30 years before the spectacular opening of this year's Cannes Film Festival, Tom Cruise - with then-wife Nicole Kidman - made a more discreet visit to the Croisette. Cruise and Kidman were the stars of the film that close the festival: Far and Away, directed by Ron Howard.

Tom Cruise has not been to the Cannes fest since 1992 – but the long-awaited sequel to one of his biggest hits was reason enough to make a strong landing on the Croisette. Our HFPA reporter team Earl Gibson, Aniko Navai and Scott Orlin caught up with the stars on the red carpet, who were all on hand to promote the takeoff of a film that is bound to excite worldwide audiences in the weeks to come.

Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning actor, producer, and director, Forest Whitaker was met with a standing ovation at the opening ceremony for the 75th Cannes Film Festival when he received an honorary Palme d’Or lifetime achievement.   He follows such luminaries as Jodie Foster, Jeanne Moreau, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jane Fonda, Manoel de Oliveira, and Agnes Varda.

The glamour, the glitter, the stars! Michel Hazanavicius' Final Cut opened the 75th Cannes Film Festival at a star-studded premiere at the Palais du Festival. Our team of HFPA reporters Earl Gibson and Scott Orlin were front and center on the red carpet.

Cannes came back in all its glory - the Palais is open, and climbing those internationally known steps requires elegance, originality, and sass. .

Cannes is not different from a pilgrimage: the gods of cinema make an appearance and the faithful follow, entranced, amused, and, sometimes, irate. In its long and illustrious 75-year journey, Cannes saw stars and filmmakers of all magnitudes interacting with their worshippers and their anointed (better yet: credentialed) clergy, the press.

May 22, 1965 - Bondmania hits the Croisette. Sean Connery and some would-be Bond Girls promote Thunderball in Cannes.

Director Constantin Costa-Gavras' Missing was a major hit in Cannes 1982. A family drama set against the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that ousted elected president Salvador Allende and led to the apprehension, torture, and death of hundreds of people, Missing won the Palme d'Or that year (split with the equally political Turkish film Yol ).

In 1977 David Lynch tried to get his first film, Eraserhead, into Cannes. 'It didn't happen', he told us.

In a year that had Volver, Babel, Pan's Labyrinth, Marie Antoinette, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, The Family Friend (and many more), a superhero movie found its way into the non-competitive selection: X Men 3: The Last Stand. Directed by Brett Ratner while Almodóvar, del Toro, and Coppola walked the red carpet, Marvel filled the super-Hollywood material with its entry for the Summer box office wars, and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Halle Berry (Storm) waltzed for the press contingent outside the Palais.