Cannes & Women: It's Complicated
Superstar women dominate the fest's stages and its discourse. Down the Croisette, though, the chatter veers from #MeToo to AI-powered porn
Claire Atkinson, who writes The Media Mix newsletter and contributes regular features for The Ankler, is part of our on-the-ground Cannes 2024 coverage, along with Gregg Kilday. Their reporting will be shared with the best of Screen’s pre-eminent coverage from its newsroom at The Majestic.
Once upon a time in film, men ran everything. Women were cast as sex symbols — if they were young enough. If they wanted to work behind the camera, they could be support staff.
This year, though, the Cannes Film Festival at least belongs to women. (No definition necessary.)
Jury President: Greta Gerwig
Lifetime Achievement Award: Meryl Streep
Host of the opening ceremony: Camille Cottin, best known as the badly behaved talent rep Andrea Martel in Netflix’s Call My Agent.
While we’re at it, Donna Langley, NBCUniversal’s content chief, came from unveiling the Wicked trailer at the company upfront presentation in New York to Cannes to be feted by Gucci-owner Kering this week.
And the women are here to dominate. It’s the men who have been relegated to the supporting acts — at least for this festival. At the jury’s opening press conference, Lupin star Omar Sy, one of only four men on the nine-person film jury, barely got a word in.
When asked at the press conference about whether the #MeToo conversations are casting a negative pall over the most iconic of film festivals, Gerwig shot back, “I think people in the community of movies telling us stories and trying to change things for the better is only good.” The Barbie director kept repeating in TV interviews that she was so surprised to find herself in such a prestigious role that she had to keep pinching herself.
Streep received the Lifetime Achievement award for her 45 years in the business. Hordes of media descended on a rainy and cool Cannes to watch the stylish 74-year-old in a white suit, straw hat, striped shirt and killer heels vamp and twirl, and blow kisses to the banks of paparazzi both in front of and behind her for almost 10 minutes solid.
Women, too, are at the center of the most buzzed-about movies, as per The Ankler’s partner in our Cannes Daily newsletter, Screen International. See: Agathe Riedinger, director and writer of Wild Diamond, about a teenage influencer, and Coralie Fargeat, whose Substance, starring Demi Moore and Andrea Arnold, earned her the Director’s Fortnight’s Carrosse D’Or. (Though it should be noted that, as my colleague Gregg Kilday wrote earlier this week, only four of the 22 movies competing for the Palme D’Or were directed by women.)
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