The Cannes Film Festival, though world-renowned by movie fans and industry professionals alike, is full of quirks and customs that can be confusing from the outside.
The Cannes Film Festival is hallowed ground in cinema but understanding its unique landscape can be confounding. The Côte d’Azur festival, which kicked off Tuesday, is a 10-day ballet of spectacle and film where even the photographers wear tuxedos, standing ovations are timed with stopwatches and movies tend to be referred to by the names of their directors — 'the Almodóvar,' 'the Malick,' 'the Coppola.' From the outside, it can seem mad.
The short answer is that Cannes is the largest and arguably most significant film festival, and few care more deeply about the art of cinema than the French. This is where cinema was born and it’s where it’s most closely guarded. It’s not a coincidence that to enter the Palais des Festivals, the central hub, you must climb 24 red-carpeted steps, as if you’re ascending into some movie nirvana.
The hive of activity is the Palais, a massive complex by the sea full of cinemas with names like Buñuel, Bazin and, the granddaddy, the Grand Théâtre Lumière. This is where the red carpet runs in Cannes, nightly hosting two or three world premieres beneath a glass canopy flanked by rows of photographers. Festival cars ferry stars and directors who are ushered down the carpet and up the steps. Unlike most movie premieres, there are no reporters on the carpet.
Cannes hierarchy is in the lineup, too. Attention focuses most on the films 'in competition': usually around 20 movies competing for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top award. Past winners include 'Apocalypse Now,' 'Pulp Fiction,' and 'Parasite.' Last year, it went to Justine Triet’s 'Anatomy of a Fall.' Winners are chosen by a jury of nine that changes every year. This year’s is presided over by Greta Gerwig. Competition is only one section, though.
There are many other prizes, too, even an unofficial one created by journalists called the Palm Dog , for the best canine in Cannes. Last year, that honor went to Messi, the 'Anatomy of a Fall' pooch. Created in 2001, the annual award and its spinoff categories is decided by a jury of reporters. Past winners have included Uggie from 'The Artist' and Sayuri, who played the heroic pit bull in 'Once Upon A Time ... In Hollywood' .
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