Out of electricity: how the Cannes Film Festival closed after the blackout
The closure of the world's main film festival was under threat throughout Saturday: the coast was left without electricity, and there was not even a mobile connection for almost five hours. But the festival continued to operate on backup power, and in the evening, the jury awarded Juliette Binoche prizes, including the prestigious Palme d'Or. Awards did not go to all the favorites — Richard Linklater's "New Wave", Wes Anderson's "The Phoenician Scheme" and Lynn Ramsey's "Die My Love" were left without prizes. But when Jafar Panahi personally appeared on the Croisette for the first time in many years, almost no one had any doubts about his victory. At the same time, it is a well—deserved victory. The details are in the Izvestia report.
The beginning of the world
The darkness that came from the Mediterranean covered the city adored by cinema. The program director of the festival, Thierry Fremaux, shuffled with a cavalry gait ... The closing day of the festival really resembled Bulgakov's prose. In the morning, residents and visitors of Cannes discovered that there was no electricity. At about 10 a.m. local time, the lights went out everywhere. No one knew what happened, the phones stopped working. There were screenings at the Palais des Festivals at that time. Suddenly the screen went out, the audience was worried in the dark, but the lights were soon turned on, and the session continued after 15 minutes.
Power outage in the city during the 78th Cannes Film Festival, May 24, 2025
And for several hours after that, the Palace, a symbol of cinematic enlightenment, was literally a citadel of light, the only place where there was electricity, telephones and the Internet. The city, however, reacted calmly. Yes, almost all the shops were closed — but they are also closed on Sundays, it just happened on a Saturday. There were no lights in the restaurants, but people were still sitting on the porches and sipping roses. There was a weekend fair, people were hanging around the flea market, and the beach was full. The only thing was to pay in cash, which not everyone has. And those who needed to use telephones tried not to stray far from the palace.
The festival has officially sent out a reassuring letter to everyone, saying that the ceremony will take place anyway, because we have our own electricity. However, it was reported that one site still stopped working — the Cinema multiplex with an Aimax screen is located a few kilometers from the palace, it was not possible to "power up" it.
At four o'clock local time, electricity was turned on, although the traffic lights were mostly operating in emergency mode. And the reassured audience went closer to the red carpet to find out who would be awarded the Palme d'Or and forever inscribed in the history of cinema. Let's talk briefly about the winners.
The Golden Palm Branch
Jafar Panahi, the largest Iranian director, winner of numerous awards from all three major world film festivals, was able to personally come to Cannes for the premiere of his film for the first time in many years. Prior to this, Panahi could not do this because of persecution in his homeland, and the festival management even defiantly placed an empty chair in his place.
Jafar Panahi, Iranian film director and screenwriter
Therefore, even if Panahi had brought a bad movie, he would still have been carried here. And he brought back very good things — and very important, relevant ones. "A simple accident" is a parable about a man who was driving a car and suddenly saw the same sexpot who once kept him, innocent, in prison, tortured, beat out testimony, ruined his health.
And so the former victim manages to tie up the sexton, wants to execute him, but he assures that this is a mistake and that he has never tortured anyone. A lot of time has passed, and the only way to check is to find other victims of torture and together establish whether the guy was captured. Panahi's main message here is that there are monsters, and there are normal people who don't even really want to take deserved retribution, because violence is unnatural.
Even if your kidneys are knocked off, even if your scars are groaning in bad weather, you still won't do it to your executioner, because you're not like him. And you never will be. And Panahi, who knows what he's talking about, proves it so simply that I want to believe him. Meanwhile, Panahi himself joined a small "club" of directors who have three main prizes at three major festivals — Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
"I would like to ask everyone, both inside and outside the country, as well as all Iranians who are making efforts for freedom and human rights, to continue to fight for this democracy," Panahi said in his acceptance speech. — The most important thing now is to strengthen the spirit of unity, preserve the country's breath, and hope for a better future, despite all the difficulties.
Best Screenplay
Every time the twice-Cannes laureates the Dardenne brothers (read their interview with Izvestia) come to the festival, everyone freezes: is there really going to be a third "Branch" for the first time in history? "Young Mothers" certainly did not claim it, but it was impossible not to be imbued with the stories they tell there. At the center of the story is a social center that helps underage mothers. Five heroines, five difficult stories about how these girls try to convince young fathers not to abandon their children, how they struggle with addictions of various kinds, and how they plan to move on. There are a lot of soul-rending passions in this quiet film, played, as often in the Dardennes, by non-professional actors. Once upon a time, for a similar story in the movie "Child", where the father sold the baby to make ends meet, the Dardennes already received a "Branch" here, there is no such shocking material in "Young Mothers". And we filmed the Dardennes together with the actresses at the premiere (this video is on Izvestia social networks, watch it for sure), the ovation lasted twenty minutes.
Brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Belgian film directors
Grand Prix of the Jury
Norwegian Joakim Trier's film (jokingly called "Trier number Two", alluding to Lars von Trier) "Sentimental Value" was bought for distribution in Russia. Among the stars of the film are Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgard, but Trier's regular actress Renate Reinswe really plays the main role there. In the center of the story is a very old luxurious wooden house in which generations of the same family were born, lived and died. Skarsgard plays a man who ran away from there a long time ago, abandoning his family for the fame of a film director. His two daughters have grown up, and then the father suddenly returns and says that he will make a film in this house about how his mother hanged herself. And offers his daughter (Reinswe) to play it. And when she refuses, she invites a Hollywood superstar (Fanning) to play the role.
Renate Reinswe, Norwegian theater and film actress
This film, in general, is quite ordinary in form and content, but very well shot and acted, it immediately became a favorite with the audience, who immediately began to give it a Palm Branch. Trier, clearly somewhat upset, but trying not to show it, dedicated his award to his grandfather.
Special Prize
From the three-hour dream film "Resurrection" by Chinese Bi Gan, some of the audience left after the first half hour, while the rest took a nap because it was late. But maybe that's how it was intended, because this experiment is a psychedelic cinephile tale about how there are those who can dream and live forever, and those who hunt for such dreamers. The action spans a century, and suffice it to say that at the beginning of the film, a film is literally stuffed into one of the characters in order to play out a scene from the Lumiere brothers' "The Watered Sprinkler."
Bi Gan, Chinese film director, screenwriter
Best Female Role
Mona Soralen, the movie "Little Sister". The young actress got an exceptionally difficult task. Her character is a schoolgirl who is trying to be a devout Muslim, follow all the rules of religion, but at the same time somehow integrate into modern French society. And there are questions that even the mullah doesn't have an answer to, and the girl has to make her own decisions. But not everyone will agree with the jury's decision, because the somewhat similar-looking Adele Exarkopoulos in "The Life of Adele" solved acting tasks much more strongly at the time. But the collision of tradition with modernity made an impression on the jury.
Best Director and Best Actor
Wagner Moura in the film "Secret Agent" (directed by Kleber Mendons Filho) played an intellectual who is trying to survive in Brazil in 1977. He's in a witness protection program, but he's being hunted by gangsters hired by powerful people. The police are corrupt, it's almost impossible to survive, and we learn this story together with a girl who, many years later, found old documents and is trying to find out what happened to that unfortunate man many years ago. The film is stylized like the cinema of the 70s, and you believe it unconditionally, I can't believe that today it was possible to so plausibly recreate the country of 50 years ago in all its details.
Kleber Mendonza Filho, Brazilian film director, screenwriter, producer and critic
The Jury Prize
They share two films. Oliver Laschet's "Sirat" is loud, not even that loud: A LOUD picture, half of which unfolds under the roar of rave speakers. At a rave festival in Morocco, a father and his young son are searching for their missing daughter. And when they don't, they go to another festival. The path runs through the desert, and the heroes try to keep up with two vans in which tattooed marginal ravers are traveling. You have to drive through military cordons, minefields, and scenic but dangerous serpentine roads. The second winner is the German "The Sound of Falling" by Masha Shilinsky, a picturesque three—hour story about girls from several generations of the same family. All these girls face death early and do not always draw predictable conclusions. The film was bought for distribution in Russia.
Who else was shown in Cannes
This year, many very important paintings were shown out of the Cannes competition — and sometimes this even caused natural bewilderment of critics. And the main such picture, of course, was Nadav Lapid's film "Yes". Its premiere took place not even at the Palais des Festivals, but at the Croisette Theater, in the parallel program "Directors' Fortnight" — a very prestigious and appreciated program, but still it is not a competition. The status of Nadav Lapid, one of the greatest modern directors, a regular participant and winner of Cannes, as well as the highest artistic quality of the film itself, should have ensured him not only a place in the competition, but also a prize. If Lapid were not an Israeli, and the film was a reflection on the fact that there can be no right or wrong in the war between Israel and Hamas, there is only a total tragedy that has been taking lives for years.
In structure and mood, the film refers to Fellini's La Dolce Vita. The main character is Israel's best pianist, who instead of "direct duties" entertains millionaires with his wife at lavish parties. In some kind of unhealthy frenzy, the couple moves from party to party, until the mysterious billionaire, played by Alexei Serebryakov, instructs the hero to write music for the "new anthem" of Israel. With the words that Gaza will be wiped off the face of the earth, and that it is necessary to crush, burn, destroy. The hero begins to lose his mind from all this, and, remembering all the terrible facts of the October 7 terrorist attack, he goes to the suburbs of Gaza smoking from bombs. It is not surprising that the festival's management was afraid of provocations from both sides, because the film is ruthless both to supporters of the military operation in Gaza and to opponents. But there were two Iranian paintings in the competition.
Nadav Lapid, film director, screenwriter and novelist
Nadav Lapid told Izvestia after the premiere about working with Serebryakov.:
— I met him through a mutual friend. He's just great in this movie. I mean, I already know that he's a big actor in Russia and has starred in many films, but I think what he's doing in this movie is a miracle. He's like, you know, he's like... He plays a strange funny and terrible devil. Or the angel of retribution.
The outstanding but unfortunately very rarely filmed director Sylvain Chaumet has brought his new little masterpiece, Magnificent Life, to Cannes. There is not much in common with Chaumet's most famous film "The Trio from Belleville", except that the melancholic mood. The film tells about the life of Marcel Pagnol, a French playwright, director and writer, the largest figure of his time in the 1920s and 1940s. A classic biopic of the genre, the cartoon weaves into the real facts the fantasies of Pagnol, who travels through his memory and compares his feelings with himself, only a child, an invisible but sensitive interlocutor who does not tolerate any cowardice. This film will be released in Russia, and Shome talked to Izvestia and said that he would be happy to present the film with us personally.:
— I really want to visit Russia! — said the director. — There is an amazing culture there, there are several places where I definitely want to go, I want to communicate with people. These places are mostly in the north. I really don't like the heat, so I should like Petersburg. It's not hot in summer, is it? How's it going?
Nicolas Pagnol, directed by Sylvain Chaume, voiced by Laurent Lafitte and Geraldine Payat, rapper and singer SCH
Kevin Smith's arrival in Cannes caused a huge stir — he brought here a restored "Dogma", which in 25 years has turned from a cult geek product into an absolute classic. The premiere of the version called "Dogma: Resurrection!" was the dream of the cinephiles of the entire festival, but it was almost impossible to get there, there were no tickets at the start.
"For many years, everyone has been telling me how many fans I have in Russia," Kevin Smith told Izvestia. — I have a long T-shirt that someone brought me many years ago from Russia, and it showed Jay and Silent Bob with a Russian bear. That is, someone was doing it! But that's all I've only heard from many people, and I've never been to Russia myself. And for many years I've been thinking: How did it happen? I have to go! In all the time that I've been making films, and it's been 31 years, I've never been to Russia!
But the film "Open Relations", a hooligan, but at the same time very intelligent comedy about how two friendly married couples are going through a crisis, will definitely come to Russia. Each of them is trying to solve it through a commitment-free relationship: it's better than losing each other, because love hasn't gone away. But where there is love, there is jealousy, and now the couple are completely entangled in a tangle of incredible (and very funny) situations, culminating in a fight between the two husbands that lasts several minutes and looks as if it was staged by John Wu's stunt coordinators. The main star of the film is Dakota Johnson, the sex symbol of Hollywood cinema after the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.
— It's a very soulful comedy about a very troubled relationship. And she's also completely unpredictable," Johnson described this project in an interview with Izvestia. The fact is that she is not only an actress here, but also a producer, so the film simply would not have happened without her.
Actress and model Dakota Johnson
Another strong impression is Lava Diaz's Magellan. It's an unusually short film, and there was a joke in Cannes that something went wrong since Love Diaz's film lasts less than the new "Mission.": impossible." Diaz usually shoots paintings for 6-8 hours. It is said that Magellan was originally a 9-hour flight, and then it was ruthlessly shortened. This may have given the painting such a strong energy despite its formal fragmentary nature. Gael Garcia Bernal plays a famous navigator who went around the world and eventually ruined himself and almost the entire team. Exactly how this happened, Las Diaz is trying to imagine. The grueling voyage with executions and riots, the skirmishes with the natives, their forced baptism, which turned into a massacre — all this is done so realistically, as if someone made a special film about it five hundred years ago.
We will talk about these and other Cannes premieres more than once in the coming months. This festival sets the direction for the entire cinematic season, defining not just fashion, but the course for the global industry. Recall that last year's Cannes winner "Anora" eventually won an Oscar and became an event far beyond the town on the Cote d'Azur. It will probably be the same this time, and you will read about many Cannes films in Izvestia more than once. And the 78th festival has been declared closed.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
