Scandal, protesting female stars and bans as Cannes festival opens
Film festival poised for vintage year for scandals, controversy
The most political Cannes Film Festival in years has opened with female stars vowing a protest on the red carpet, two top directors barred and bans hanging over other movies.
With the industry still reeling from the Harvey Weinstein scandal and Cannes under fire for its dearth of female directors, this year's jurors Cate Blanchett and Kristen Stewart are likely to join around 100 actresses and female directors on Saturday to march in support of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements against sexual harassment.
The new Star Wars spin-off, Solo, is the only Hollywood blockbuster in a slightly less starry line-up than usual.
But with no less than a dozen films with LGBT themes, and others tackling child abuse, male prostitution and an eye-watering DIY sex change, it has all the makings of a vintage year for scandal and controversy.
A new documentary about the tragic US singer Whitney Houston by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald reportedly includes a devastating revelation about the demons that dogged her life.
Black Panther director Ryan Coogler is also likely to tackle the lack of black faces in Hollywood in a Cannes masterclass.
With Monty Python's Terry Gilliam fighting in the French courts to have his disaster-plagued The Man Who Killed Don Quixote shown, the first Kenyan movie to be selected for the festival has already been banned in its homeland for daring to depict a lesbian romance.
Despite a plea by US director Oliver Stone, Teheran has refused to lift a travel ban on Iranian Jafar Panahi, whose Three Faces is in the running for the top Palme d'Or prize.
The dissident director made it on the sly after being banned from making films for 20 years for his activism after the 2009 election in Iran.
Appeals to bail out Russia's Kirill Serebrennikov, under house arrest in Moscow on supposed embezzlement charges, have also fallen on deaf ears.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux said on Monday that it was ironic that both Iran and Russia should be "punishing the directors when neither film is political".
Doubts also hang over whether Gilliam's Monty Python-esque movie will be allowed to close the festival after it became embroiled in a bitter legal battle over ownership.
Judges in Paris will decide today whether the film, which Gilliam has worked on for nearly two decades, can be shown.
But it is Cannes' "dismal" record on female directors and Saturday's red carpet protest led by A-list stars which may generate the most political heat.
Long before Weinstein had been accused of attacking four women at the festival, Cannes had been under fire for a "problem with women".
Women have been stopped on the red carpet in previous years for not wearing high heels, and its dress code has been condemned as sexist.
The Weinstein scandal gave its critics further ammunition, with screenwriter Kate Muir lacerating the festival as "a two-week celebration of male brains and female beauty".
The fact that only three out of 21 directors in the running for the top prize are women - the same number as last year - has also rankled.- AFP
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