How Cannes works, from the standing ovations to the juries to the Palm Dog
The Cannes Film Festival is hallowed ground in cinema but understanding its unique landscape can be confounding
CANNES, France — 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. From the inside, it can be hardly less disorienting. But grasping some of Cannes' quirks and traditions can help you understand just what is unspooling in the south of France and what, exactly, a Palm Dog is.
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.
Cannes is also singularly global, attracting filmmakers, producers and journalists from around the world. It’s a little like an Olympics for film; countries set up their own tents in an international village. Because Cannes is also the largest film market in the world, many who come here are trying to sell their movies or looking to buy up rights. Deal-making, though not quite the frenzy it once was, happens in hotel rooms along the Croisette, aboard yachts docked in the harbor and, yes, on Zoom calls.
But aside from being a beacon to filmmakers and executives,
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