The Cannes Festival Begins with Radical Reforms

Source: Twitter

The Star, CANNES, FRANCE—Plucky rebels are taking on threatening marauders at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and I'm not just referring to Solo: A Star Wars Story, which has its world premiere here next week.

This grand cinema event on the French Riviera, unveiling its 71st edition on Tuesday, is feeling besieged by the modern world and it's fighting back, resisting some changes while embracing others.

At issue is everything from "ridiculous and grotesque" selfies on the red carpet to mean tweets by movie critics to sexual-harassment concerns to the existential fear that online giant Netflix is working to make traditional moviegoing extinct.

The selfie ban is perhaps the most visible of several moves by Cannes officials to bring more dignity and order to an annual event that sincerely wants to celebrate film but in recent years has found itself grappling with outside concerns — which this year also include the #MeToo and #TimesUp female empowerment movements, as the first Cannes fest in the post-Weinstein era unfolds.

As more than 4,000 journalists began pouring into Cannes Monday, festival artistic director Thierry Frémaux took the unusual step of having an impromptu news conference to explain multiple changes this year to festival protocol.

The selfie ban on the red carpet outside the Palais des Festivals is necessary, he said, because camera-mad people have been holding up the procession, sometimes by tripping and falling on the carpet as they take their photos.

"You don't come to Cannes to see yourselves, you come to see films … and in a selfie people always look really ugly," Frémaux said.

Cannes accreditation badges are being handed out along with a note requesting that no selfies be taken on the red carpet. ...

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