Cannes vs Netflix: the streaming service will not participate in the festival

Between Cannes and Netflix it is war.

It all started last year when the films presented by the streaming platform were whistled and treated as if they were lower level than the others.

Things have further precipitated with the decision to ban the participation in the official competition and, therefore, the chance to win the Palme d'Or for films without theatrical distribution.

It seems that behind this choice there is the pressure of French film exhibitors, not satisfied by the fact that the Festival participate in films that then do not go to the cinema but directly online. On the other side, Netflix is opposed to the French law which provides that films can be made available in streaming only 36 months after their passage in cinemas, which, if the company participated in the competition in Cannes, would force it to wait 2021 to show those works to its French users.

Today, official communication has arrived: no Netflix films will take part in this year's Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from 8 to 19 May.

"We want our films to be on fair ground with every other filmmaker […] I don’t think it would be good for us to be there". - “The festival has chosen to celebrate distribution rather than the art of cinema. We are 100% about the art of cinema. And for the record, every other festival in the world does it. Thierry (Fremaux, the delegate general of the Cannes Film Festival) commented, when he announced the decision, that the history of the Internet and the history of Cannes are two different things. Obviously they are two different things. But we are choosing to support the future of cinema. If Cannes chooses to get bogged down in the history of cinema, that's fine".

And he adds:

"It is not a coincidence that Thierry also banned selfies this year. I don’t know what other advances in media Thierry would like to address".