Yet it will be without
Canal + and without a minister of culture known at the time these lines are written. It will also be without Netflix and its streamer friends, but that we suspected a little. Cannes 2022 is the end of Pierre Lescure’s mandate, the start of that of Iris Knobloch on July 1, but also the start of that of France Télévisions and Brut, which will metaverse the Croisette for almost two weeks.
Media tide
Cannes 2022 is more than 125,000 festival-goers back on the Croisette, a shower of stars to track down as they leave the palaces, parties that end at the end of the night, meetings that start on rue d’Antibes and continue continue to Eden Rock, billboards plastered in front of the Carlton and that we may never see.
Cannes is 60 meters of red carpet, 24 steps to climb under the crackle of flashes, more than 4,800 journalists and 12,000 professionals come to do their shopping at the film market.
Because yes, Cannes 2022 has always been first and foremost a film festival, with several competitions and as many juries from all over the world to reward artists for whom the 7th art represents their raison d’être and to create. Cannes 2022 is both the rebirth of the Festival and the rebirth of the quest for new cinematographic emotions, such as those of Truman Burbank who went in search of the reality of his life in The Truman Show and who dresses the Palais des Festivals.
Cannes: lots of glitter, fewer entries
Alas, Cannes and the box office are not really a love story. The Palme d’Or multi-millionaires are rare, and apart from Pulp Fiction (2.8 million admissions) and the Piano Lesson (2.6 million admissions), it’s hard to find real popular hits that have heated Comscore stats. We even found films screened in Cannes and never released in theaters! Between 2010 and 2021, only 2 palmed films exceeded one million admissions: La Vie d’Adèle in 2013 and Parasite in 2019. This is the paradox of Cannes: a festival object of all desires and auteur films which no longer attract crowds. As Manuel Chiche (The Jokers) says, in the columns of
World : “
today, when an auteur film reaches 100,000 admissions, we open the champagne “. Under these conditions, beyond the glitter and the media buzz, one can wonder about the real economic and cultural weight of Cannes on the cinema industry.
Cannes 2023: Hollywood beach?
Under these conditions, some good connoisseurs are wondering about the weight of Cannes against its competitors, the Venice Film Festival and Toronto. Reconciling artistic demands and box office success, bringing together the ever-divergent interests of cinema exhibitors and streamers, welcoming confirmed talents and revelations will undoubtedly be among the priorities of the new president of the Cannes Film Festival, Iris Knobloch. With a question that asks
Telerama “Is Hollywood going to make a comeback at Cannes” with his appointment?
In the meantime, for the millions of moviegoers who are not accredited, we will follow the rise of the steps on our mobile phones. And that is also “Amazing”.
