With Netflix officially announcing last month that the streaming service had no intention on showing films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it wasn’t at all surprising to see the official lineup without one film from the company. However, that didn’t stop the folks at Cannes from talking about their tumultuous relationship with Netflix and what the future might hold for the partnership.
For those that didn’t follow last year’s drama, Netflix and Cannes fought over the rule that state that a film must have French theatrical distribution to compete at the film festival. The hiccup in the agreement comes from the fact that French law dictates that any film that is shown in theaters must wait 36 months before it arrives on a streaming service, which basically is a rule that Netflix cannot and will not abide by. Therefore, last year, Cannes and Netflix were at a stalemate and the high-profile film that was expected to premiere, “Roma,” was shipped off to Venice.
READ MORE: Netflix Is Skipping Cannes Again This Year & Won’t Debut A Film At The Festival
This year, there’s no fighting, but still no agreement. And Cannes’ director Thierry Fremaux still has thoughts about the situation and what the future might hold.
He joked during the official lineup announcement today (via Deadline), “‘Roma,’ I’ll remind you, was a Cannes Film Festival film, but one we showed in Venice.”
After no laughs came from those in attendance at the panel, Fremaux said, “That one still makes me laugh, but not you.”
The Cannes director said, “The rule is simple and the history is simple. Two years ago we chose two films from Netflix… We wanted to bring the debate to the heart of the world’s biggest film festival and in effect open this discussion. At the time, perhaps overly sure of ourselves.”
READ MORE: Filmmaker James Gray Says Cannes Is “Stuck In 1968” & “Protectors Of The Status Quo”
Fremaux continued by saying that he thought, for sure, that the festival could convince Netflix to follow the French theatrical laws, but to no avail.
“There is no battle between us, we just saw them recently and spoke the day before yesterday, but the rule of the festival is that for competition films, they have to come out theatrically in the festival’s territory,” said Fremaux. “They aren’t there yet and we understand that very well… And we aren’t there, I dare say, far from it — especially when we receive the encouragement of Steven Spielberg or Jean-Luc Godard and exhibitors and a great many filmmakers. We don’t want to accept films in competition that won’t meet audiences in theaters.”
Cannes President Pierre Lescure has a bit of a different view on the subject, particularly sighting the fact that with Apple and Disney on the verge of launching their own streaming services, Netflix might be focused on its core streaming business and not so worried with the film festival.
“Their real problem today, a year after ‘Roma’ and two years after their arrival in Cannes… is to prepare the opinion of their clients and shareholders for the arrival of other giants,” Lescure said.
He added, “We did well to say, ‘There is a revolution and evolution, new actors in the market, led by Netflix. We accept that.’ They are not going to play the rules of the game of France… But we remain vigilant because it is an essential movement that will change our habits and will change more in the future with the new players.”
That being said, the president of Cannes does think that change, on the side of French theatrical law, will change in due time.
“Generally speaking, we can’t have fixed windows for all films. We have to find rules that are more supple and evolving,” he said.
This year’s Netflix-free Cannes Film Festival will begin on May 14.
