Festivals

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.

It's May 6th,1955, and Grace Kelly, wearing a fur stole and carrying a bouquet of roses, stops to smile for the camera. She's in Cannes to promote To Catch a Thief, Alfred Hitchcock's latest opus, co-starring Cary Grant and filmed in part on the French Riviera.

When a lady is presented the opportunity to celebrate her 75th anniversary, you better believe she wants the event to unfold orderly, without chaos, on time and with good weather. While the past two years of the pandemic has humbled more than a few celebratory events, the grand dame of Cannes is coming out of her two-year celibacy by pulling out all the stops for her diamond jubilee.

The HFPA is proud to announce that long-time member, Film and Sociology Professor Emanuel Levy, Ph. D.

It seems the importance that Ibero-American cinema has been acquiring in the film industry or on the international festival circuit does not matter. With all the effort applied to this edition of the Cannes International Festival - the in-person return after two years affected by the pandemic - in the end, this film fest, considered among the most important in the world, has pretty much forgotten Ibero-American cinema, again.