It might look like a platform for the films ‘produced in foreign lands’ that Donald Trump despises. But a surprising number of pictures at this year’s festival side with the locally rooted over cosmopolitan elites
If Donald Trump really wants to save Hollywood, maybe he needs to venture outside his comfort zone and watch more European art house cinema.
The Cannes film festival, which closes on Saturday, is in many ways the very definition of the “globalism” that the American president’s Maga movement despises. Walk past the queues snaking alongside the Palais des Festivals and you hear languages and accents from every corner of the globe. The Marché du Film, where industry professionals strike their deals, is brimming with smart people from all over the world beckoning US producers with irresistible tax incentives – resulting in the kind of movies “produced in foreign lands” that the US president earlier this month proposed punishing with 100% tariffs. At the opening gala, Cannes gave Trump arch-enemy Robert De Niro a platform to rally the world of cinema against the US president, “without violence, but with great passion and determination”.
