The Cannes Film Festival is bracing for a tumultuous 77th edition. As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, attendees and organizers anticipate protests, politically charged speeches and pins and flags that signal solidarity with Palestinian civilians, Israeli hostages and Ukrainians looking for more military assistance from the West as they try to fend off the Russian invasion.
But if the festival has its way, there will be none of that. The city of Cannes preemptively banned protests along the Croisette and its surroundings during the 11-day festival. Likewise, the festival hired private security to trail the Competition jurors including Eva Green andLily Gladstone to keep activists from approaching them. And while the festival was initially amenable to a plan for Arab filmmakers to wear pins showing support for the Palestinians under siege in Gaza, it changed course and will ban them as well as pins that pay homage to the more than 100 remaining Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7terror attack.
“This year we decided to host a festival without polemics, to make sure that the main interest for us all to be here is cinema, so if there are other polemics it doesn’t concern us,” festival chief Thierry Frémaux said at a press conference on the eve of opening night festivities.
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That hasn’t stopped Cannes-bound artists from posting on social media. “There is nothing that justifies the killing of children in Gaza. or anywhere,” Omar Sy, one of the jurors, recently shared on Instagram in a post urging elected leaders to take action to try to stop Israel’s ground offensive in the Gaza city of Rafa.
Over the years, the high-wattage festival has allowed some political and activist events. In 2018, Cate Blanchett, Kristen Stewart and Salma Hayek were among the 82 women who staged a demonstration on the red carpet against gender inequality in the industry. In 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared via video at the Cannes opening ceremony, where he promised that his country “will win in this war” against Russia, to thunderous applause.
But the appetite for political messaging has waned as the issues have become more divisive in the movie business, with the festival and participants wanting to keep the focus on the films themselves. Zelenskyy sought to return to Cannes last year but was rebuffed. Sources say he was poised to make a surprise video appearance at the start of the “Killers of the Flower Moon” premiere and solicit continued support for his country. It is unclear who nixed the idea.
Last year, a Ukrainian influencer was ejected from the steps of the Palais after she doused herself in fake blood in protest to Russia. But tensions are much higher surrounding the current Israel-Palestinian conflict, now in its seventh month. Israel’s military campaign, which has resulted in more than 30,000 people killed in Gaza, has ignited intense, sometimes violent protests throughout Europe and on American college campuses.
The festival and the city of Cannes are taking more precautions than theyhave in recent years and are hoping to avoid what happened at last week’s Eurovision Song Contest, where thousands of protesters assembled in the Swedish host city of Malmo to denounce the inclusion of an Israeli contestant.
“This year, we’ve had 15 security briefings compared with only four or five last year, so I can tell you it’s a very serious matter,” says the festival’s general secretary Francois Desrousseaux. “We also have AI-powered cameras around the Palais for the first time, and we’ve also starting using new AI safety gates, which allow festivalgoers to go through security faster without the burden of having to empty their pockets and show their bags.”
The Israeli Pavilion, located inside the Marché, is expected to remain open, with events highlighting the 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7, casualties and hostages. Several panels are planned, with potentially two hostage family members in attendance.
Gadi Wildstrom, who organizes the annual Cannes Shabbat dinner for industry power brokers, says this year’s event will go on as planned despite heightened security concerns amid the darkening geopolitical picture.
“In 2014, when there was another war in in Gaza, and we had a Shabbat dinner at the kosher restaurant called Tovo,” says Wildstrom. “And the French army blocked off the road and were standing at both sides of the street with machine guns. The French are unlike the American authorities and European authorities. They don’t accept anything.”
