A word from the Presidents


If you are elected, you embody a certain legitimacy and you have the responsibility of defining the policy of the institution you lead. This year I was determined that the event should not lose sight of two axes that I consider to be of primary importance: pleasure in meeting up and an invitation to go on a journey.

To film is to chart a passage. Someone - a spectator - is doing the same thing in the opposite direction. He and the cinematographer meet in the middle and light fills the tunnel from one end to the other. This ray of light is their encounter. Not just two, or ten, or a hundred of them meeting, but also their encounter with a work of art, a cinematography, an audience: another film lover who has been injected with the same receptivity to light. I would like the future of the festival to be the result of all these encounters, from the most expected to the most improbable, the most official to the most preposterous, the most ardently hoped for to the welcome joy of meeting old friends...

Second axis: even before the concept had been invented, the Festival de Cannes had developed its own unique vision of globalisation. It means adding new countries to the ones that it is already exploring. Countries that had disappeared from the map of cinema, far off places where nobody had ever set foot before... In the world of film, there are always remain regions yet to be discovered or that require revisiting. This is the sentiment that I hope to convey in the expression: "festival of the 5 continents + 1". This sixth continent is not necessarily a geographical entity (geography has not been a question of economics or language for the festival for a long, long time - it is a question of humanity): it is a cosmopolitan planet upon which land the talents of tomorrow.
Of course, all these newcomers cannot be received in the competition as soon as they arrive. If not for any other reason, there would not be enough room. Especially in a year that seem to indicate the end of the lean years. However, as guests at Cannes, they can meet the great filmmakers who are the traditional suppliers of the festival, and in doing so gradually bring themselves up to the level of the competition rather than the festival having to one day include them by demagoguery. It is these new cultivators, the future suppliers of the festival, who must feel as at home at Cannes as the film students of the Résidence who are invited by the now famous Cinéfondation, not to mention those invited by this years innovations: L'Atelier du Festival and Tous les Cinémas du Monde.

Via all this, all the above, the festival continues its work as land-clearer, surveyor: a wall-climber, as Marcel Aymé once said; by walls I mean all walls: economic, political, administrative, egocentric, even the walls of indifference - not forgetting that Marcel Aymé wrote Travelingue, which is, in itself, a most delicious invitation to the cinema.

Hereafter (see other article related) you will find some thoughts confided by our President, Mr. Kusturica. Isn't the vocation, now as ever, of Cannes to welcome artists, to introduce them to each other, to create that special connection that I so desire to establish with them, to keep alive that little flame of reciprocal esteem and affection that mean that when we meet we have a thousand things to share, a thousand bursts of laughter, and pick up the conversation exactly where we left it even if the last time we saw each other was many years ago?... Because this time, dear Emir, daddy is on his honeymoon.