Cannes, a voice for censored directors
By Bénédicte REY
The Cannes Film Festival, which from the beginning has taken care to strike a balance between diplomatic sensitivities, has little by little become a soundbox for filmmakers who are censored in their own countries.
In September 1946, a series of technical problems during the screening of a Soviet film, which had to be interrupted several times, led the Soviet delegation to cry sabotage and threaten to quit the festival. It only calmed down after Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” met the same fate.
Cannes hardly had time to cut its teeth before it went through the demands of the Cold War.
At the time the festival was above all a socialite and diplomatic affair.
The films presented on the Croisette were chosen by the countries invited by France.
to the rules a film could be withdrawn from the competition if it risked hurting the national sentiment of other countries.
Thus, in 1951, “The New China “, a Sino-Soviet documentary by Sergei Gerasimov was withdrawn from the competition so as not to harm relations with countries which did not recognise the new Beijing regime. In retaliation, the Soviet authorities boycotted the 1952 and 1953 festivals.
In 1957, the French government pressed for Alain Resnais’ “Nuit et Brouillard” (“Night and Fog”) documentary on the concentration camps to be left out of the selection so as not to offend Germany. The film was presented out of competition.
In spite of these constraints, the festival was already showing the agitators. In 1961, the Palme d'or was awarded to Luis Bunuel’s “Viridiana”, drawing an angry reaction from the Franco regime, which had banned the screening of the film in Spain and ordered the destruction of the negative.
In 1968 the student uprising reached the festival, opening a chapter of contestation and politics.
In 1972 the festival affirmed its independence, from then on choosing itself the films which would be shown in competition. Gilles Jacob, who was in charge of the selection, accelerated the movement.
From his arrival in 1978, the new general established with the screening of “Man of Marble” of Andrzej Wajda the idea of surprise films, a political film which had been censored and that he sneaked into Cannes.
Four years later, the follow up “Man of Iron”, shot during the strikes at the Gdansk shipyards and also presented as a “surprise film” won the Palme d'or, giving a worldwide impact to Poland’s young Solidarnosc movement.
Cannes goes to any lengths of subterfuge to screen a banned film. In 1980, the reels of Andrei Tarkovsky’s haunting “Stalker” arrived under a false name. The projectionist was locked in his cabin and the Russian delegation, furious, was walked from one side of the Croisette to the other during the screening.
In recent years, the festival has been in a standoff with Iran and to a lesser degree with China, to support the new waves of filmmakers from these countries.
In 2006 “Summer Palace”, which describes the repression of the 1989 protests in Beijing, was presented in competition without the agreement of the Chinese authorities. Its director Lou Ye was sanctioned and banned from filming for five years.
Three years later he was again welcomed on the Croisette with his “Spring Fever”,shot in clandestinity and winning the prize for the best screenplay.
That same year the Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi won the « Un certain regard » prize for “No One Knows About Persian Cats”, also shot in clandestinity and showing the repression faced by young musicians of the Tehran underground.
The standoff with Iran reached a climax a year later with the arrest in Teheran of the filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was making a film on the post-electoral protests in the country.
It signalled the start of the mobilisation for the director, who was slated to be a member of the jury.
During the opening ceremony, which was broadcast worldwide, his chair was left symbolically empty, a gesture since copied by all the major festivals.
Panahi, was sentenced to six years in prison, confined to his home and banned from filming for 20 years, which did not prevent the festival from screening his new film the year after.
Panahi, who has since left Iran, went on to win the Palme d’or in 2025 for “It was just an accident” and was able to go to Cannes for the first time in 15 years to collect his prize.