The 71st annual Cannes Film Festival took place over two weeks. It kicked off on Tuesday May 8th and run until Saturday May 19th 2018. The festival is expected to be attended by over 30,000 industry professionals, and some 5,000 journalists.

The Cannes Film Festival is one of the world’s premiere film events and features many of the biggest names in Hollywood. It has been held in Cannes, France every year since 1946. This year the President of the Jury will be actress Cate Blanchett.

While there has already been a flurry of excitement surrounding the outfit’s being worn on the red carpet this year, a storm also hangs over this year’s event. Several events have caused a slightly somber mood to descend over the ceremony.

Hollywood’s leading female artists unite in protest

The Hollywood scandal that broke when famous producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault by scores of women soon led to over 100 industry insiders (and climbing) being accused of wrongdoing.

This led to the #MeToo and #Time’sUp movements that aim to finally out sexual misconduct and exploitation in Hollywood. As part of the movement’s ongoing campaign, and to protest the huge imbalance of male to female directed films at this year’s festival, 82 top female industry insiders walked down the red carpet together earlier this week.

This powerful protest was led by jury president Cate Blanchett and included Kristen Stewart, Ava Duvernay, Lea Seydoux, Khadja Nin, among others.

Netflix Controversy

Film fans were stunned and disappointed to discover that Netflix had decided to pull its nominated films from being shown at the festival in retaliation against the organizers not allowing other Netflix films into the competition.

Despite desperate attempts to get Netflix to reconsider, Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Morgan Neville’s They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark and Paul Greengrass’ Norway will not be screened at this year’s event.

2018 Cannes Film Festival Official selection

Competition for this year’s Palme d’Or is fierce. Here is a complete list of the nominees:

3 Faces – Director Jafar Panahi (Iran)

At War  – Director Stéphane Brizé (France)

Asako I & II – Director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (Japan)

Ash Is Purest White – Director Jia Zhangke (China)

Ayka – Director Sergey Dvortsevoy (Kazakhstan)

Burning – Director Lee Chang-dong (South Korea)

Capernaum – Director Nadine Labaki (Lebanon)

BlacKkKlansman – Director Spike Lee (United States)

Cold War – Director Paweł Pawlikowski (Poland)

Dogman- Director Matteo Garrone (Italy)

Everybody Knows – Director Asghar Farhadi (Spain)

Girls of the Sun – Eva Husson (France)

Happy as Lazzaro – Alice Rohrwacher (Italy)

The Image BookLe – Director Jean-Luc Godard (France, Switzerland)

Knife + Heart (QP) – Director Yann Gonzalez (France)

Shoplifters – Director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan)

Sorry Angel (QP) – Director Christophe Honoré (France)

Summer – Director Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia)

Under the Silver Lake – Director David Robert Mitchell (United States)

The Wild Pear Tree – Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

Yomeddine (CdO)

For a complete listing of all the nominees to this year’s Cannes Film Festival click this link.

Cannes Film Festival 2018 Events

As with previous years, the 73rd edition of the Cannes Film Festival was running lots of events and workshops to compliment competition screenings. Here are some of our top picks:

Critics’ Week

This event aims at nurturing new talent in the film industry. A total of seven films will be screened during this event. After the screenings, the panel of critics will select their top choice. The winner not only gets the notoriety of winning the prize but also the pleasure of being awarded a “Grand Prix Nespresso” too.

Directors’ Fortnight

The French Film Guild’s Golden Coach award is given to one director every year. It allows the panel of directors to award one of their peers this prestigious prize in honor of their accomplishments.

Cannes Film Fans

​This award is organized by the Cannes Cinephiles society. It supports the festival by showing a selection of films from the festival in 4 separate venues around the city. Unlike the Cannes Film Festival screenings, which require either invitation or an expensive ticket, these screenings are open to all and completely free.

The Launch of Sofy.tv: A Streaming Platform Exclusively Dedicated to Short Films

This year’s Cannes Film Festival saw the launch of Sofy.tv. This exciting new short film streaming platform is the creation of Largo Films and aims to finally allow audiences access to a huge catalog of shorts.

Massively overlooked by mainstream audiences for decades, short films are a powerful art form that at last are making a comeback. The passionate team at Largo Films hopes that Sofy.tv will help create a short film revolution.

Their platform welcomes submissions from all kinds of filmmakers. Entries will be scrutinized by the submission team and added to their growing catalog once accepted. If you would like to submit your film then you can do so by heading to the Sofy.tv site and clicking “Distribute Your Short.”

Subscribe Us –