Netflix Films Banned From Competing At The Cannes Film Festival
By Hoai-Tran Bui/March 26, 2018 7:30 am EST
The Cannes Film Festival has officially banned Netflix from submitting films to future competition lineups. Now, Netflix joins the ranks of flats for women, selfies, and Lars Von Trier as some of the many things that the prestigious film festival has banned.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix and other streamers can show their films out of competition at Cannes, but they won’t be eligible to win the Palme d’Or, the fest’s prestigious top prize.
“Last year, when we selected these two films, I thought I could convince Netflix to release them in cinemas,” Cannes festival head Theirry Fremaux said in an interview with Le Film Francais. “I was presumptuous, they refused.”
Last year, Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories were allowed in the Cannes competition despite only screening for day-and-date release in both theaters and streaming. This flouting of French law that mandates 36-month delay between a movie’s theatrical release and streaming date “created an enormous controversy that has echoed around the globe,” Fremaux remarked rather dramatically.
In response, Cannes changed its rules, requiring future competition films to commit to distribution in French movie theaters. Fremaux added:
Why Cannes and Netflix Clashed
For the 2017 festival, Netflix had tried to get temporary permits to screen the films for less than a week in France, allowing for a day-and-date release so the films could be seen in theaters and online at the same time. But that didn’t fly with French filmmakers and unions, who condemned Netflix.
One of the many golden reactions came from Christophe Tardieu, director of the National Cinema Center, who told the New York Times last year that Netflix is “the perfect representation of American cultural imperialism.” Yes, really.
It’s clear that Cannes sees itself as an exclusive hub for film, despite Fremaux’s insistence that it’s a “risk-prone festival.” The festival is an archaic stickler for tradition — just look at its insistence that all women in attendance wear heels. And like Steven Spielberg, Cannes doesn’t quite know what to make of a digital “disruptor” like Netflix.
Or maybe the landscape of cinema is changing as we know it.
