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LE DIVORCE: The Cannes Festival and its main sponsor Canal Plus part ways

After 28 years one of the festival world's glossiest collabs is splitville

PARIS - On Thursday it was announced that Canal Plus, a France-based media conglomerate that began in 1984 as this country’s first privately-owned television, would be definitively pulling out of the Cannes Festival as its main sponsors. Cannes, and Canal as it’s known more simply, have been in a collab for the last 28 years, the latter beaming the opening and closing ceremonies into hundreds of ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL announces opening film: “Annette” by Leos Carax

IT'S ALIVE! The Cannes Festival, much like the sphinx rising from the ashes, announced today that it will open its July edition with a Leos Carax movie, "Annette," starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver. Anyone who reads Screen Comment and my fourteen year-long exclusive coverage of the world's best film festival for this magazine will know that Cannes normally takes place in May but, what with ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL announces summer-bound edition in 2021. But will it stick?

Festival normally takes place yearly in May

The Cannes Festival will indeed take place this year, two months later than usual. In a press release sent this afternoon by email, the festival said the 2021 edition would run from the 6th to the 17th of July. Cannes would thus take place about a month after the government of France will have been able to complete dissemination of the covid-19 vaccine nationwide, the idea being that, for France, ... more >

EPIC PICTURES x DREAD ACQUIRE WORLD ON TRIO OF HORROR FILMS AHEAD OF CANNES MARCHÉ DU FILM

Los Angeles, Calif. | Epic Pictures and DREAD have announced the acquisition of the worldwide rights to a slate of three films ahead of the Cannes Marché du Film, which is set to take place digitally from June 22nd to June 26th, 2020. The films acquired for distribution include Andy Collier and Toor Mian’s horror flick "Sacrifice," co-starring Barbara Crampton (You’re Next, From Beyond, ... more >

#cannes2020 is dead. Long live #cannes2020

The films from this year's selection were announced today

PARIS - Finally, the suspense is over. Thierry Frémaux, programmer of the Cannes Festival, and Pierre Lescure, President, released today the names of the films that would've been screened at Cannes this year, had the event taken place. As we all know, the world went tits up in March, everything got canceled because of a wayward virus, including the Festival, and Donald Trump recently held a Bible ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL – The sun sets on 73*

Some parting words on an edition that sadly wasn't

It's Sunday, May 24th. Normally I would've been be at the Cannes Festival for the 73* edition, the first of this new decade, hunkered down in the press room, gulping my umpteenth cup of coffee, with friends and colleagues, typing out the final reviews of this 2020 edition, running communication with others working from their hotel rooms, getting confirmations, or denials, about the latest rumor ... more >

OPINION: #cannesfestival2020, an enigma wrapped in mystery with a cliffhanger that’s … never coming?

The festival's latest press release about when and how it will take place this year is a strange bird

And  now, for the Cannes Festival press release that announces little, leaves much to speculation and wraps up with a note of mystery while flirting with contradiction--and causes much collective eye-rolling in people, one would assume? It did in me, at least. I am rolling my eyes right now, at this strange bird of a message received in my inbox at 6 p.m. Paris time this Tuesday. It began ... more >