For days leading up to the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, it seemed that rain would dampen the 78th edition. The film gods spared the worst. The red carpet remained dry Tuesday and so did the beautiful people parading into the Lumière, the grand auditorium where each year cheek-kissing, glad-handing stars and deal makers get this generally fizzy party going. At the 2024 edition, a barefoot chanteuse had sung Bowie’s “Modern Love” to Greta Gerwig, the president of the jury, delighting her and everyone else in attendance. This year, by contrast, the atmosphere inside the room was moody and felt more uncertain than the weather.
There were the usual smiles, couture gowns and starry entrances. Yet overall it was a fairly sober affair, and only partly because the evening featured a poignant tribute to David Lynch, who died in January. When Juliette Binoche, the president of the main competition jury, took the stage, she spoke about the obligation of artists to testify on behalf of others, mentioning the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 and quoting the Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who in April was killed with 10 family members in an Israeli airstrike. Hassouna is featured in a documentary here, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.”
Later during the ceremony, Robert De Niro received an honorary Palme d’Or (handed to him by Leonardo DiCaprio), and spoke of democracy and the arts. “America’s philistine president has had himself appointed the head of one of our premiere cultural institutions,” he said, an apparent reference to President Trump’s naming himself chairman of the Kennedy Center in February. De Niro then referenced the topic that started phones pinging throughout the entertainment industry on May 4, and led to stark headlines and head-scratching.
Leonardo DiCaprio giving Robert De Niro an honorary Palme d’Or.Credit…Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
To wit, President Trump’s May 4 announcement on social media that he was imposing a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced in foreign lands,” an issue he called a national security threat. The next day, a White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said that no final decisions had been made on such tariffs, but that the administration was “exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again.”
Like other film lovers, I responded to this tariff threat with a mixture of concern and confusion. Among other things, how such tariffs would work is baffling given the movie world’s complexity and internationalism, or how it’s possible to even define which films are “produced in foreign lands.” Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” was partly shot outside the United States; when Florence Pugh steps off a skyscraper in the movie, she topples from a building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The specter of retaliatory tariffs from other countries is another concern, given how reliant American companies are on the global market. In 2024, “Inside Out 2” was the top-grossing movie both domestically and overseas, with 61.6 percent of its overall box office coming from abroad.
