CANNES UNCUT

UK, 2023, 90 minutes, Colour.

Thierry Fremaux, Lea Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Juliet Binoche, Sharon Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Mark Cousins, Lynne Ramsay, Wim Wenders, Sean Baker, Mark Adams, Chris Pickard.

Directed by Richard Blanshard, Roger Penny.

For those who love the movies, who are fans of the stars, those interested in International film festivals, this is a very enjoyable 90 minutes. While there is the focus on fandom, the range of talking heads chosen gives a great deal more substance to this documentary than might have been expected.

The Cannes film Festival is the most prestigious Festival in the world, followed by such festivals as Berlin and Venice, and an increasingly wide range of international and local festivals.

The documentary offers an overview of the development of the festival, Mussolini’s initiatives in the 1930s to create a festival in Venice but, by the end of the decade the festival becoming an instrument of promoting films approved of by the government. As a counterbalance, the film industries decided to create a free festival in Cannes, but its first session at the time of the outbreak of World War II and its being cancelled. Discussions after the war led to the new establishment of the festival on the French Riviera, the selection of films in 1946 indicating prestige, the several hundreds who attended the festival in its earliest years, the increasing prominence, the crowds, the glamour, Hollywood presence, the campaign in 1968 to stop the festival because of social upheaval, the continued history of festival highlights leading to the early 2020s.

At the centre of the film is the longtime director, Thierry Fremaux, offering a great deal of commentary throughout the film, the history, the ups and downs, the controversies including the issue of the eligibility of Netflix and streaming features for the competition.

While there are constant visuals that hold the attention, the glimpses of styles, the glimpses of stunts (and quite elaborate stunts at the Festival (Jerry Seinfeld and the cable for The Bee Movie rather surprising, Jack Black photographed falling into the water for Shark Tale), a great deal of the walking up of the red carpet, the photographers, the posing, the celebrities…

Quite a number of significant directors and actors speak to camera, prominent are Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, the film historian, Mark Cousins, Lynne Ramsay and with the two writers of the film, Mark Adams and Christopher Pickard. Oliver Stone has many observations about being rejected by the festival, especially by previous director, Gilles Jacob, his experiences of the 1980s and 1990s. There are scenes with Juliette Binoche when she was younger, praise of Sharon Stone, something from Wim Wenders and Sean Baker.

Certainly not definitive but, just as certainly, interesting, some issues for thought, and entertaining.