Cannes Fetes 75th Anniversary With Who’s Who Of Special Guests: “Cinema Will Never Die”
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival gathered dozens upon dozens of previous laureates and special guests at the Palais des Festival this evening. Inside the Lumière Theatre, the fest’s artistic chief and general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, and outgoing Cannes President, Pierre Lescure, did a roll call of star actors and directors who left their seats and made their way to the stage .
The group included such filmmakers and talent as Guillermo del Toro, Michel Hazanavicius, Paolo Sorrentino, Isabelle Huppert, Mads Mikkelsen, Diane Kruger, Nicolas Winding Refn, Ethan Coen, David Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen, Daniel Bruhl, the Dardenne brothers, Claude Lelouch, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal. and many, many more.
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Fremaux declared, “Cinema will never die.” He told the capacity audience that for the 75th celebration, “We don’t want to go to the past, but to look to the future… We have to fight to help cinema get back in our lives after the pandemic.” He continued, “Cinema is still alive… cinema will never die.”
The special nod to 75 years of Cannes came ahead of the official out-of-competition screening of Louis Garrel’s L’Innocent starring Garrel, Noemie Merlant, Roschdy Zem and Anouk Grinberg.
And, boy, did they get the timing right. After a sun-dappled red carpet and with everyone inside the Lumière, the heavens opened to a major thunderstorm outside.
The festival has previously called back former winners for its milestone anniversaries, and today also held a symposium on the state of the industry with such notables as del Toro, Lelouch, Costa-Gavras, Gaspar Noé, Paolo Sorrentino, and more.
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