Cannes 2025: Cannes Film Festival Diary— Uneasy mix of the political, conservative and Hollywood

Cannes openers have never been much to write home about. So, the world’s biggest celebration of cinema kicked off to a predictable start this year as well, with a middling, underwhelming opening film, French filmmaker Amelie Bonnin’s directorial debut, Partir un jour (Leave One Day). It is the first time that the festival has opened with the first film by a woman filmmaker.

Based on Bonnin’s own 2023 Cesar winning short, the musical is about a Paris based chef and TV show winner Cecile (Juliette Armanet), who, just as she is setting up a restaurant of her own, is forced to return to her hometown because of her father’s illness. The journey takes her back and reconnect with, not just her parents but old friendships and a teenage love as well.

Potentially sweeping in its appeal, what with the tussle between individualism and relationships, about memories and continuities and the ever evolving bonds we share with people and places, it doesn't quite deliver an emotional wallop on screen. Not once does it reach out and connect with the audience remaining dangerously distanced from the characters, their feelings, the nostalgia and most so the food and music at the core of the narrative. While one keeps waiting for things to warm up, banality and tediousness prevail. A miss rather than a hit.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the festival the focus remained on an uneasy mix of gender and political and artistic issues facing the film industry, all playing against the backdrop of a larger than life Hollywood and strife torn Ukraine and Gaza.  

American President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 100 per cent tariff on foreign-produced films was bound to be the most talked about topic in the French Riviera but the festival’s General Delegate Thierry Fremaux preferred to remain unfazed in his press conference the day before the festival’s opening. “It’s far too early in the game,” he said, expecting a usual rollback from Trump.

Fremaux’s love for the big American movies is well known and the first two days at Cannes have borne that out yet again with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s mic drop moment at the opening ceremony announcing the start of the festival. Tom Cruise franchisee, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, has been the blockbuster premiere this year. Legendary actor-filmmaker Robert De Niro received the honorary Palme d’or from his colleague and Killers of the Flower Moon co-actor Leonardo DiCaprio at the opening and participated in a Rendezvous session on the following day.

De Niro was unusually vociferous in his award acceptance speech but typically monosyllabic in the terribly dull rendezvous. At the opening he took a dig at Trump’s tariffs with the jibe: “You can’t put a price on creativity, but apparently you can put a tariff on it.”

“In my country, we’re fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. That affects all of us because the arts are democratic. Art is inclusive. It brings people together. Art looks for truth, embraces diversity and that’s why it is a threat. That’s why we are a threat to autocrats and fascists,” he said, to resounding applause.

He said that America, and the world at large, can’t afford to just sit back and watch: “We have to act now. Without violence but with great passion and determination. It’s time for everyone who cares about liberty to organise, to protest, and when there are elections, of course to vote.”

The other hotly debated issue plaguing the film industry, beside tariffs—artificial intelligence—also got expectedly raised with Fremaux stating that it needs to be controlled: “It’s becoming something very powerful, interesting, disquieting at the same time.”

With French actor Juliette Binoche taking over the mantle of jury president this year from American filmmaker-actor Greta Gerwig last year, it is the first time the festival has had back to back women jury heads since actors Olivia de Havilland and Sophia Loren in 1965 and 1966. There are four other women giving Binoche company on the jury this year—Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani, Italian actor Alba Rohrwacher and Hollywood actor Halle Berry.

Understandably, the jury press conference brought the #MeToo movement back in foreground in the light of the French icon Gerard Depardieu having been found guilty of and sentenced for sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021. “He is no longer sacred,” said Binoche, adding, “That means you need to think hard about the power wielded by certain people.”

The new Cannes dress code also came up for discussion and brought to light its adverse consequences for Indian couturier Gaurav Gupta. Binoche welcomed the fact that heels are no longer a must on the red carpet. Berry agreed with the pushback on nudity but the no to long trains and voluminous gowns meant that she had to change her red carpet look for the opening at the last minute. “I had an amazing dress by [Gaurav] Gupta to wear tonight but I can’t because the train’s too big,” she smiled.

Binoche wasn’t able to defend herself convincingly on not signing an open letter of film artistes on the Gaza conflict but did say that “that more the world is going to dangerous places, the more we need art”.

A group of more than 350 international actors, directors and producers—including Pedro Almodovar, Susan Sarandon, Alfonso Cuaron, David Cronenberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, Ralph Fiennes, Ruben Ostlund—have signed a letter condemning the killing of Fatma Hassona, the 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and protagonist of the documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk who died, along with 10 other members of her family, in an Israeli air strike the day after the documentary was announced as part of the parallel ACID section lineup. "We cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza... We are ashamed of such passivity": the letter states.

Meanwhile, Cannes love for Volodymyr Zelensky stays strong, with a special three-film programme dedicated to Ukraine which includes Zelensky by Yves Jeuland, Lisa Vapné and Ariane Chemin. The other two films are Notre Guerre, by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Marc Roussel and Mstyslav Chernov’s 2000 Meters to Andriivka. 

Last, but not the least, Kapadia declared at the jury press conference that she’s working on two Mumbai films, after the celebrated All We Imagine As Light (AWIAL), to complete the Mumbai trilogy. “I am working on two more films on my city Mumbai with different sets of characters. It is a city full of complexities and contradictions and I need to explore that before moving to something else,” she said.

Her journey in Cannes has been nothing short of meteoric with the short Afternoon Clouds presented in student films section, Cinefondation (now called La CineF) in 2017. Her documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing was at the Directors' Fortnight in 2021 and was the winner of the L'Œil d'or award for Best Documentary Film. With the Grand Prix for AWIAL last year and being a jury member this year she is now part of the Cannes royalty.