Cannes 2025: Creation, Palme d'Or... 10 key dates to know everything about the festival

The Cannes Film Festival has become a must-attend event for film professionals and enthusiasts from around the world. Since 1946, it has awarded prizes to the best film selected in competition (Grand Prize and then Palme d'Or), the best director (Best Director Award), and the best actor and actress (Best Actor and Actress Award).

Since 1932, the Venice Film Festival has served as a barometer of world cinema. But in 1937, Jean Renoir's peace-loving film La Grande Illusion received the Grand Jury Prize. A furious Adolf Hitler agreed with his Italian counterpart Benito Mussolini to choose the winners themselves at the following edition. Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda documentary, Gods of the Stadium (about the 1936 Berlin Olympics) and the Italian film Luciano Serra , Pilot ultimately received the Mussolini Cup.

Feeling betrayed, the French, British, and American representatives refused to participate in the Italian festival. Philippe Erlanger (director of the French Association for Artistic Action) and film critics Émile Vuillermoz and René Jeanne (all three members of the Mostra's international jury) then submitted to Jean Zay, Minister of Public Education and Fine Arts, the idea of ​​a politically independent international film festival in France.

The Americans actively supported the idea and proposed bringing their biggest stars by ocean liner. Cannes, a sunny seaside resort already capable of hosting large numbers of festival-goers in its palaces, was chosen to organize it. Louis Lumière agreed to preside over the first edition, which was scheduled to take place from September 1 to 20, 1939. But just before the opening, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The organizers immediately canceled the festival.

After two other aborted editions in 1942 and 1945, the first Cannes Film Festival finally took place from September 20 to October 5, 1946, in the city's former casino. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the City of Cannes co-organized and co-financed the event with the support of the CGT (General Confederation of Trade Unions), of which the famous director Louis Daquin was a member. It was an immediate success, and film buffs hoped for a repeat performance the following year.

Despite this success, the French government refused to fund the festival the following year, while giving the National Centre for Cinematography (CNC) responsibility for selecting the films in competition and requiring producers to submit their films to a special selection committee. Each country represented had one vote on the jury that awarded the prizes.

The Palais des Festivals was inaugurated on the Croisette in September 1947. However, media reports revealed that Cannes and Venice had signed an agreement to alternately host their festivals and thus avoid a collision between the two events. In other words, the festival would take place in Cannes in odd-numbered years, and in Venice in even-numbered years. The festival therefore did not take place in 1948 and 1950, officially for financial reasons.

In 1951, the festival established an annual edition in the spring rather than the fall. It thus abandoned a date potentially close to the Venice and Locarno festivals. In 1955, Robert Favre Le Bret, its president, decided to award a Palme d'Or to the winner to replace the "Grand Prix du Festival international du film," awarded to the director of the best film in the competition.

The festival's board of directors opted for a design by jeweler Lucienne Lazon. The first Palme d'Or was awarded that same year to Delbert Mann for Marty . The Grand Prix resumed its place from 1964 to 1974 before being permanently phased out in favor of the Palme d'Or. A Grand Jury Prize still exists, but is considered the second step on the podium.

The year 1959 marked a turning point in the history of the Festival. Less worldly than in its early days, it prioritized the quality of the works. The awards thus revealed the prodigies of the New Wave: the Best Director award went to François Truffaut for The 400 Blows , while director Alain Resnais presented Hiroshima Mon Amour at the same time.

That same year, Cannes held the first film market, seeking to facilitate exchanges between sellers and buyers in the film industry. This global platform has since become the premier platform for international film trade. In 2019, just before the Covid pandemic, the international film market, which was celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, welcomed more than 12,000 participants from 96 countries.

In the spring of 1968 , a strike and sometimes heated demonstrations shook France. The Cannes Film Festival opened in a tense atmosphere. On May 13, angry students invaded the Palais des Festivals. Demonstrators blocked official screenings.

On May 18, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Lelouch, Claude Berri, Roman Polanski, Louis Malle, and Jean-Pierre Léaud joined the protesters and rebelled against Culture Minister André Malraux. Alain Resnais, Carlos Saura, and Miloš Forman withdrew their films from competition. The festival was stormed and became the scene of political clashes. The next day, the organizers decided to cancel it.

In 1972, Robert Favre Le Bret, appointed president of the festival, and his team established an independent selection committee for French films and another for international cinema. Until then, states had chosen the films presented at the festival themselves. Diplomacy was definitively losing its influence in favor of the cinematic quality of the works.

In 1978, the festival's new general delegate, Gilles Jacob, created the "Un Certain Regard" section within the official selection, intended to highlight more daring forms of cinema, as well as the Caméra d'Or, which rewards the best first film in all sections.

In 1983, the Cannes Film Festival moved from the Palais de la Croisette to the brand-new, immense Palais des Congrès, built along the port and immediately dubbed "the bunker" by festival-goers due to its massive architecture. More spacious, it accommodated the festival's growing attendance. But the work, barely completed, disrupted the first edition in 1983.

At a special ceremony, all the directors who have already won the Palme d'Or gather on stage to present the Palme des Palmes to Ingmar Bergman. In his absence, Liv and Lisa Ullmann, his wife and daughter, receive the trophy. At the closing ceremony, Youssef Chahine receives the 50th Anniversary Award for Destiny and for his entire body of work from the hands of jury president Isabelle Adjani. Abbas Kiarostami's The Taste of Cherry and Shohei Imamura's The Eel win the Palme d'Or jointly.

General Delegate of the festival since 1978, Gilles Jacob was appointed president and was supported from 2001 to 2005 by Véronique Cayla and Thierry Frémaux , the latter becoming the general delegate in 2007. Under their leadership, the festival, and especially the film market, experienced constant expansion. They also created the International Village, a platform for international cinematography. The official selection was enriched in 2004 with a section dedicated to heritage films "Cannes Classics" and, in 2021, with a Cannes Première section to present previews of films by directors appreciated by the festival but which were not selected for competition.

Despite the cancellation of its 2020 edition due to Covid-19, Cannes remains the unmissable event for world cinema. The climb of the 24 steps with the famous red carpet remains the obligatory passage of the eleven days of the festival where personalities, including politicians, like to show off. It is sometimes the site of symbolic demonstrations, as in 2018, when 82 women , including Cate Blanchett and Agnès Varda, climbed the steps together to demand equal pay in the world of cinema. Only two women have won a Palme d'Or since the creation of the festival, Jane Campion in 1993 for The Piano and Julia Ducournau for Titanium in 2021.