Unfortunately for the Cannes Film Festival, the stories surrounding the prestigious French event this year weren’t so much about the actual films presented at the festival. Instead, the focus has been on what wasn’t at Cannes, particularly the Netflix films (and American films, in general). Now, as Venice, TIFF, and Telluride begin to raise their profile as the premier film festivals in the world, Cannes director Thierry Fremaux is discussing this change and why he just doesn’t understand it.
“I don’t understand this obsession with American movies. My friend [Venice director Alberto] Barbera didn’t have Kore-Eda’s film, nor Korean, Egyptian or Lebanese movies in Competition. I think a festival must show the cinema of the whole world,” explained Fremaux (via Screen Daily).
READ MORE: Netflix May Have Lost The Cannes Battle But Got Sweet Revenge In Venice
He continued, “Still we had Spike Lee and John Cameron Mitchell’s film. Venice plays its game and they’re right to screen Netflix movies if Cannes doesn’t take them, they’re also right to play the Oscar card because the press is more obsessed with one night in March than with the six months from July to October.”
There’s no other way to read this than to say that the Cannes boss is definitely throwing shade at Venice, after the Italian festival became the most-discussed event of the year, so far. This comment comes after a year where Cannes and Netflix feuded over French law (read all about it here) which prevented the streaming service from premiering the films they planned to at the festival.
Instead, many of those films went to TIFF and Venice. And despite Fremaux’s comments about American films, Venice ended up giving its highly-coveted Golden Lion to “Roma,” which is the Mexican film from Alfonso Cuaron…that Netflix is distributing.
We recently reported that Netflix recently had closed-door meetings with Fremaux about the future of the Cannes Film Festival. But as of now, there’s nothing to report says the Cannes director. Also, don’t say he has any sort of bias against the streaming giant.
“I am neither pro or against Netflix,” he said. “My job is to show the state of cinema in a time in which Martin Scorsese is about to release a movie produced by Netflix. In 2017 the board of the festival asked me not to accept any more movies that won’t screen in theatres. This isn’t strange if you think that exhibitors are in that board. And they are right to be preoccupied by this trend.”
He continued, “I would like to screen every movie I like. I couldn’t invite some of these in 2018 [because of the Netflix ban], we’ll see about 2019. You need to wait for the next episode.”
As of now, it sounds like Cannes really, really wants to premiere Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” a Netflix production, but we’ll have to see if that comes to fruition. The 2019 Cannes Film Festival is set to begin May 14, 2019.
