Cannes kicks off amid controversies

With the film industry buffeted by the #MeToo movement, the much awaited event reflects changes

A view of the Palais des Festivals, the venue for the 71st Cannes Film Festival, on Monday. Arthur Mola/Invision/AP Arthur Mola

Gender balance could not have found a better visual representation than the sight of the Palme D’Or jury members at the opening press conference.

President of the main competition jury, actor-producer Cate Blanchett sat right in the middle with two men (writer-directors Denis Villeneuve and Andrey Zvyagintsev) and two women (writer-director-producer Ava DuVernay and actor Lea Seydoux) to her right and another two men (director-writer-producer Robert Guediguian and actor Chang Chen) and two women (actor Kristin Stewart and author, composer actor Khadja Nin) to her left. However, the press conference made it clear that gender, diversity or political factors won’t be the determinants in the choice of the Palme d’Or winner.

Top three

Despite the “female majority” jury, the irony of just three women directors competing for the top award — Eva Husson for Girls of the Sun , Nadine Labaki for Capernaum and Alice Rohrwacher for Lazzro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro) — wasn’t lost on many.

“Few years ago there were only two,” said Ms. Blanchett. She admitted that she would want to see more women directors but the change can’t happen overnight. “They [women filmmakers] are not there because of their gender. They are there because of the quality of their work. We will assess them as filmmakers, as we should,” she said. “There is no transgender filmmaker. So have we failed already? We will deal with we have in hand,” she elaborated further.

Given the turn of events in the showbiz in the last one year, it wasn’t unexpected to have #MeToo questions thrown at the members of the jury. How has it changed the film industry?

Mr. Villeneuve pointed out that it is a wave, a movement, that will take time to reflect positively on cinema. According to Ms. Blanchett, profound and lasting impact can happen through raising specific issues than mere “generalisations and pontifications”. Only then can it have a direct impact on the films and the way they are made, she said.

Does feminism clash with the glamorous side of Cannes —the red carpet, for instance? Ms. Blanchett was quick to point out that being attractive and intelligent is not mutually exclusive. For her the festival itself is about joie de vivre , glamour and also discord. “Harmony can’t always be creative,” she said. A concord would make the world “terribly boring”, she added.

Ms. Khadja Nin aligned the issue of racism with gender, referring to the 16 French actresses talking about their life in cinema in the collaborative book Black is not my Job. “It’s a long path to change… They will be walking the red carpet and we will be there to support them,” she said.

On the question of two filmmakers in the contest being under house arrest, Ms. Blanchett said though Cannes was not “political”, it does open eyes and hearts to things around the world... While it is unfortunate that they couldn’t be here, she stressed that what they had would be judging for “is not Nobel Peace Prize but Palme D’Or”.