Everything you need to know about Cannes Film Festival 2024
This month will see the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival welcome movies, stars, industry insiders and journalists from the world of cinema. The event is always hotly anticipated by filmmakers, as well as those who appreciate movies of a certain calibre.
It’s not only a celebration of the year’s noteworthy big-screen productions but a chance to see what the hype around them is all about. The event will be chock-full of movie premieres, complete with red carpet catwalks and lengthy standing ovations.
There’ll also be the chance for some stars to try their hand at critiquing films, with judging panels for the awards being given out at the festival. It’s become customary to see a big name heading up the main jury at Cannes.
So, what can we expect from this year’s festival? Which films are showing? Who’ll be parading their designer outfits at the premieres? And who’s judging what? Answering your most search questions, here’s all you need to know about the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
What is the Cannes Film Festival?
First things first, a little more on the background of the festival. Cannes is widely recognised as the most prestigious film festival in the world. To have won over the audience at a Cannes premiere of your film means you’ve almost certainly garnered the esteem of most film critics with mass media clout, as well as your peers in the industry.
The festival has its origins in a scandal at the 1938 Venice Film Festival, one of its fellow marquee events on the cinema calendar. The top prize at Venice was rigged to go to a film chosen by fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, leading to a boycott of the festival in 1939.
An alternative festival was proposed by the French government, with Cannes chosen as the host city. The festival had to be postponed indefinitely following its opening night premiere due to the outbreak of World War Two.
However, the foundation stone had been laid, and the Cannes Film Festival became an annual showcase for world cinema following the war. The first full festival in 1946 featured films from 21 countries.
Cannes would go on to become the foremost platform in world cinema for the artistic appraisal of films, as well as for the sale of film rights via its Marché du Film (film market), founded in 1959. It’s now a must for movie industry heads to make an appearance at the festival alongside some of the biggest actors and directors in the world there to promote their latest films.
According to the official Cannes website, over 4,000 films and film proposals have been presented at Cannes. More than 12,500 industry insiders have participated in the festival from 121 different countries.
Where is Cannes Film Festival held?
The festival is held every year across the city of Cannes, with multiple cinemas and other venues hosting an extensive programme of film screenings, press junkets and award ceremonies. In the history of the Cannes Film Festival, 33 venues in the city have hosted movie screenings.
For the 2024 event, 13 venues are involved in various types of film screenings. The main festival screening venues include the Grand Théâtre Lumière, which holds gala screenings and the closing ceremony at which competition awards are announced.
There is the Debussy Theatre, too, where the Un Certain Regard (for experimental feature films) and short film competition pictures are screened before a ceremony at the venue announces the winners in these categories. The Buñuel Theatre hosts La Cinéf Selection (for aspiring filmmakers) movie screenings and prize giving for this category.
…and where in France is Cannes?
The city of Cannes is on the southeastern coast of France, commonly known as the French Riviera. It is less than 100 miles from the major port city of Marseille to the west and close to the resort city of Nice and the principality of Monaco in the east.
The French Riviera was already known as a hotspot for the rich and famous before the film festival was created, which is why Cannes was chosen as its host city. In fact, movie stars such as Cary Grant and Mae West used to arrive at the event on a luxury cruise liner in its early days.
When is Cannes Film Festival 2024?
This year, the Cannes Film Festival will take place between Tuesday, May 14th and Saturday, May 25th. The full programme for screenings and award ceremonies will be revealed via the festival’s official website on Monday, May 6th.
The main closing ceremony, with the awarding of the festival’s grand prize for the best film in the competition, will take place on Saturday, May 25th. It will be broadcast live, exclusively on the channel France 2 in France.
Meanwhile, the Un Certain Regard prizes will be awarded the day before, on Friday, May 24th. The La Cinéf film school awards ceremony will happen on Thursday, May 23rd.
Which films premiere at Cannes this year?
The headline draws competing for the main 2024 prize at Cannes are Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi epic Megalopolis and Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice.
Megalopolis will be the first Coppola-directed film released in 13 years and was nearly abandoned on several occasions due to lack of funding. The man behind The Godfather trilogy ended up ploughing $120 million of his own money into the film to get it made.
Out of competition, we’ll see the latest instalment of George Miller’s Mad Max franchise Furiosa premiered, with Anya Taylor-Joy in the titular role.
Elsewhere, Yolande Zauberman’s Le Belle De Gaza and Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s The Invasion are particularly topical documentaries receiving special screenings.
You can find a full list of the films screening at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival here.
What is the Palme d’Or?
The Palme d’Or is the name for the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival, awarded to the film adjudged to be the best among those submitted for competition by an eight-member jury of filmmakers. Translating as “Golden Palm”, the award is named after the shape of its statuette, which is inspired by the palm leaf on the coat of arms for the city of Cannes.
Prior to 1955, the award was simply called the Grand Prix or “grand prize”, until its palm design was inaugurated. The first winner of the Palme d’Or was Delbert Mann’s understated romance film Marty.
Ten directors have won multiple Grands Prix or Palmes D’Or, including Francis Ford Coppola for The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon and Amour, and Ken Loach for The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake. Coppola would become the first director to win three awards, if he were to win this year for Megalopolis.
While his film is the favourite to win based purely on speculative hype, he faces stiff competition from British director Andrea Arnold drama Bird, and David Cronenberg’s horror film The Shrouds.
Who is sitting on this year’s Palme d’Or jury?
Alongside previously announced festival president Greta Gerwig, the eight jury members who’ll be deciding the winner of the 2024 Palmes d’Or have been revealed in recent days.
They are drawn from around the world and include stars of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone and James Bond actor Eva Green.
In addition, there is Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won best screenplay at Cannes 2023, Lebanese writer-director Nadine Labaki, and Spanish writer-director J.A. Bayona. Turkish screenwriter Ebru Ceylan and actors Omar Sy and Pierfrancisco Favino round out the list.
What other awards are being given out at Cannes 2024?
As well as the Palme d’Or for best film, there will be seven other prizes given out for movies included in the main competition at Cannes 2024. These prizes are for best short film, actor, actor, director and screenplay, plus two more separate awards: the Grand Prix and the Jury Prize.
Aside from the main competition, there are various prizes for films in other categories of festival screening, such as Un Certain Regard and La Cinéf. What’s more, multiple honorary Palme d’Or awards will be given out, including to Japanese anime pioneers Studio Ghibli and Star Wars creator George Lucas.