Cannes Movie Competition chief Thierry Frémaux entered the room with a martial bearing, his sq. jaw tilted upwards within the method of a person who needn’t doubt his significance.
He got here to the Salon des Ambassadeurs inside the Palais to make a couple of remarks earlier than the awarding of the annual l’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award for the pageant’s prime documentary, as chosen by a jury. Earlier than an viewers of maybe 100 or extra nonfiction movie lovers, he acknowledged what should be thought-about unquestionable:
“Documentaries are a minority inside the Cannes Movie Competition. There have been documentaries previously, however only a few,” Frémaux acknowledged, earlier than including, “But it surely’s true that over the previous few years, there have been many extra.”
Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux speaks on the l’Oeil d’or ceremony
Matthew Carey
He went on to say, “[With] your minority standing, you possibly can all the time really feel a little bit oppressed. You aren’t. I can reassure you straight away that there’s proof. The proof, this prize; the proof, this jury, these people who find themselves right here.”
These comforting sentiments apart, it’s laborious to argue with the proof that Cannes sees documentary as secondary to the septième artwork, or 7th Artwork, because the French typically name cinema. Of the greater than 20 movies chosen for official competitors, not a single one was a documentary. On condition that solely movies In Competitors are eligible for the Palme d’or, meaning nonfiction movies got here in with no probability of profitable the pageant’s most coveted prize. (In Cannes historical past solely two docs have received the Palme d’or – in 2004, for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which was in all probability awarded extra for the movie’s political message than its cinematic qualities; and in 1956 for The Silent World, the oceanographic movie directed by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle).
Movie contributors Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, director Kaouther Ben Hania and movie participant Tayssir Chikhaoui attend the picture name for ‘Les Filles D’Olfa (4 Daughters)’ on the 76th Cannes Movie Competition on Might 20, 2023
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis through Getty Pictures
Two years in the past, it appeared Cannes is perhaps turning a nook in its view of documentary as cinema – inviting not one however two nonfiction movies to display screen in Competitors: Kaouther Ben Hania’s 4 Daughters and Wang Bing’s Youth (Spring). However then final 12 months it reverted to kind, omitting any docs from Competitors, a sample repeated this 12 months. Earlier than 2023, it had been nearly 20 years – the Fahrenheit 9/11 12 months – that Cannes had deigned to confess a documentary to Competitors.
Director Mati Diop kisses the Golden Bear on the 74th Berlinale Worldwide Movie Competition in Berlin on February 24, 2024
Andreas Rentz/Getty Pictures
Venice and Berlin, the 2 different most prestigious European festivals, have displayed a lot much less tendency to segregate documentary from fictional cinema. Certainly, the Berlinale’s Golden Bear has gone to a documentary 3 times within the final decade: Dahomey, directed by Mati Diop (2024); On the Adamant, directed by Nicolas Philibert (2023), and Fireplace at Sea, directed by Gianfranco Rosi (2016). Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, typically described as docufiction, received the Golden Bear in 2015.
In 2022, the Golden Lion – Venice’s prime prize – went to the documentary All of the Magnificence and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras.
Director Dziga Vertov, Nineteen Twenties
Everett Assortment
Going again to cinema’s roots within the late 19th century, the primary projected movies had been primarily documentaries – sometimes called “actualities” again then. Amongst them had been very temporary shorts directed by the French Lumière Brothers – Auguste and Louis – “Exiting the Lumière Manufacturing unit in Lyon” (1895) and “Fishing for Goldfish” (1895). Nanook of the North, the 1922 silent directed by Robert Flaherty, is taken into account the primary documentary function. Dziga Vertov’s documentary Man with a Film Digital camera (1929) has been voted one of many best films of all time – nonfiction or fiction.
Director Déni Oumar Pitsaev with Julie Gayet, president of the l’Oeil d’or jury
Matthew Carey
Cannes’ l’Oeil d’or prize has solely been round for 10 years. This 12 months, the glory went to Imago, directed by Chechen filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev, a movie that premiered in Critics Week (Semaine de la Critique) the unofficial Cannes sidebar.
“It’s good that there are increasingly more documentaries in Cannes,” Pitsaev informed me after profitable the l’Oeil d’or, “however it’s perhaps time that we’re not within the again room, however that it’s thought-about simply cinema. Wasn’t cinema born in documentary as nicely?”
Un Sure Regard, an official Cannes sidebar, likewise gave no like to docs. “It’s 20 movies,” Pitsaev famous, “and no documentaries.”
‘Imago’
Triptyque Movies/Want Productions/Arte Cinéma/RTBF
The Critics Week jury, comprised of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and others, awarded the French Contact Prize to Imago, praising its subtlety: “It observes however by no means insists, listens however by no means forces, captures however by no means encloses.”
The movie was edited by Laurent Sénéchal, the Oscar-nominated editor of Anatomy of a Fall, and fellow award winner Dounia Sichov. Pitsaev stated he all the time meant the movie to be cinematic (and thus worthy to be within the firm of scripted movies).
“The movie was financed as a piece of cinema, not only a documentary,” he stated. “The movie was additionally helped by Arte Cinema, not simply Tv, however Arte Cinema. Folks sometimes ask me, ‘When is it going to be on TV?’ and I simply remind them first it’s going to be a theatrical launch, so finish of October it’s going to be launched in cinemas in France. We’re more than pleased that individuals can see the movie on an enormous display screen because it was deliberate. All of the collective of the picture and likewise sound, all of the work we did, it’s performed for cinema, to have the complete theatrical expertise.”
David Lynch in ‘Welcome to Lynchland’
Yleisradio
Cannes does have a piece partly dedicated to documentary movies – Cannes Classics, which packages nonfiction movies oriented in direction of cinema historical past, administrators, and actors. This 12 months’s lineup included Welcome to Lynchland, a movie about David Lynch directed by Stéphane Ghez; Bo Being Bo Widerberg, a doc concerning the Swedish filmmaker directed by Jon Asp and Mattias Nohrborg, and Slauson Rec, a movie about Shai LaBeouf’s free theater firm in L.A. directed by Leo Lewis O’Neil.
Cannes additionally slated a few documentaries in different sections. Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, Raoul Peck’s movie about writer George Orwell, bowed as a “Cannes Premiere,” and The Six Billion Greenback Man, Eugene Jarecki’s documentary about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, was slotted as a “Particular Screening.” The Six Billion Greenback Man received a Particular Jury Prize in honor of the tenth anniversary of l’Oeil d’or.
Director Eugene Jarecki holds the l’Oeil d’or Particular Jury Prize on the Cannes Movie Competition
Matthew
“I do assume this can be a seismic improvement inside the Cannes Movie Competition, my film apart,” Jarecki informed me after profitable the award. “Simply the truth that you possibly can really feel the pageant leaning into documentary far more than ever earlier than, leaning into the intense points which are flying around the globe proper now. Should you have a look at what confirmed on the pageant this 12 months, the dedication of the pageant to Fatima [Hassouna, a Palestinian photojournalist killed in Gaza], there’s extraordinarily necessary stuff occurring. And I feel the best way the psyche of the pageant has shifted, we’d like that… We want increasingly more individuals to step up and get involved and get engaged. And I got here right here not understanding what to anticipate of that, of how a pageant of poetry and fantasy and romance could be coping with a contemporary period the place all of us have such grave considerations, they usually’re leaning into it.”
If Jarecki is correct and Cannes takes a extra critical flip within the route of documentary, it will possibly display that by choosing nonfiction movies for Competitors. We’ll see if that occurs in 2026. Comme disons les français, on verra.
On the idea of previous historical past, I might argue Cannes stays all about poetry, fantasy, and romance as embodied by the spectacle of the pink carpet (le tapis rouge) and the celebrities ascending the steps to the Palais, the place they’re sometimes greeted by Thierry Frémaux. That’s the beating coronary heart of Cannes. Documentaries, for essentially the most half, lack the inherent glamour that constitutes Cannes’ true identification.
