Quotes & Sayings About Cannes

I ended up meeting this guy Stefan Simchowitz, who produced Requiem for a Dream and also went to AFI. I randomly met him in Cannes. By September of 2000, we had made a deal with this company that he was working with. They merged with us and in January of 2001, we opened WireImage. It was pretty crazy because I only started shooting celebrity stuff in 1998 - literally two and a half years later, I'm opening this company. — Jeff Vespa

So, where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year? — Christina Aguilera

Cannes is a little bit like French wine. There are certain years that people prefer over others. — Rob Lowe

I like doing the promotional work. It's part of the film's process. Cannes was very wonderful to premiere. — Nicolas Winding Refn

I love the Cannes Film Festival. From the lavish parties and events to the red carpet attire, this star-studded week-long event is where I get a lot of inspiration for hair and fashion. — Tabatha Coffey

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! — Leonard Leventon

In 2009, I went to Cannes with a short film in the Kodak emerging program at the American Pavilion. — Ryan Coogler

After Cannes every year, I end up going to some foreign country I've never been to before and introducing myself to a new religion - I'll go to Bali and research Hinduism, or I'll go to Thailand and get another tattoo from Thai tattoo artist Ajarn Noo Kanpai. — Michelle Rodriguez

Italy to me is like the mean mother. Whatever I do, it's never good enough. People say I'm the queen of Cannes, but in Italy I get turned down for work. — Asia Argento

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid. — Leonard Leventon

Each year we go to the Cannes film festival and I tend to have all my friends pile in the back of my car and we'll drive from London. The poor production company think they're only putting me up and suddenly they've got eight people sleeping on my hotel room floor. — Jeremy Irvine

I was asked to go to Cannes to present Amores Perros. And little did I know that this film would be huge. I saw it for the first time in Cannes, and it was the first time I'd seen myself on such a big screen. And it had a huge impact on me - it was the strangest feeling. — Gael Garcia Bernal

As a director, or just a film fan who wants to enjoy the festival, Cannes is the worst place to be. But it must be a paradise for distributors and importers. — Bong Joon-ho

I've been to Cannes 15 or 16 times, and every time I go, there's a kind of soul-stirring feeling. — Gong Li

The first time that I came to Cannes, I think it was in 1953, I was 18 and unknown. — Brigitte Bardot

'The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western. — Ridley Scott

People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year. — Jean-Luc Godard

I quite like that people tend not to know my name. I remember being at the Cannes film festival for 'All or Nothing.' I looked very different in the film - I had a little greasy bob and no makeup. I went to a dinner after the screening, and everyone completely ignored me. I got a real buzz out of that. — Lesley Manville

At least in America, the narrative is I'm a Cannes favorite. But, in fact, I've had my best experience in Venice, both with the audience and the jury. — James Gray

Representative democracy had been replaced by the surveillance camera and the private police force. — J.G. Ballard

Do you not know? Dolls are nothing until someone decides to pick them up and use them. During that time they are whatever they are expected to be. Whatever is commanded of them. You say I am not a doll, but like everyone else that is exactly what you want me to be. A lovely toy you may amuse yourself with... But remember, General, that when playtime is over and the doll has been returned to her shelf, the pretty shell you see? That is what she really is. Everything else is pretend. — Roselynn Cannes

I really understood what was happening in Cannes. I was in a restaurant during a break and when I came out 2 hours later, 500 people were waiting for me at the exit. It was total chaos. They literally had to carry me to the car. — Robert Pattinson

In terms of finding that first international recognition of my work, coming back to Cannes is such a milestone in my life because it began actually with 'Devdas'. — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital. — David Frum

When I met Bono at the Cannes Film festival while I was there for the film 'United 93,' he said to me, 'That's a great film, brother. Thank you for your courage in making it.' I plotzed. — David Alan Basche

After Cannes, my agent told me to get the next flight to LA. He was right. I had a part in 'Prime Suspect 3' by the end of the week. — David Thewlis

There's this Ryan Gosling quote that I steal all the time - I watched an interview with him in Cannes - and he said picking roles is like listening to songs on the radio: There can be a lot of really great songs in a row, but then one comes on that just makes you want to dance. — Emma Stone

If you approach Cannes with a sense of humor, nothing is that bad. You have to take it for what it is; otherwise, it's silly. — Mathieu Amalric

For some time, I thought being a producer would be a more fulfilling career than being an actor. But then I went to a conference in Cannes with 300 other producers, all desperately chasing finance for their projects ... and realized being an actor wasn't so bad after all! — William Kircher

You hear people saying, 'Oh I'm so tired, I've had enough of Cannes.' How can you have enough of Cannes? It's just the best place to be, like a fairytale. — Marjane Satrapi

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. — Roger Ebert

For many years I enjoyed the pleasure of cruising on my yacht all summer long and these were my best holidays. In mid-May, we'd start in St Tropez. I'd collect my bikinis from my home there and then we'd go up to Cannes for the Film Festival, on to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix and then to Italy. — Ivana Trump

Ever since the movie premiered at Cannes, I've had a sudden surge of scripts and interest. — Berenice Bejo

Rambert also spent a certain amount of time at the railroad station. No one was allowed on the platforms. But the waiting-rooms, which could be entered from outside, remained open and, being cool and dark, were often patronized by beggars on very hot days. Rambert spent much time studying the timetables, reading the prohibitions against spitting, and the passengers' regulations. After that he sat down in a corner. An old cast-iron stove, which had been stone-cold for months, rose like a sort of landmark in the middle of the room, surrounded by figure-of-eight patterns on the floor, the traceries of long-past sprinklings. Posters on the walls gaily invited tourists to a carefree holiday at Cannes or Bandol. And in his corner Rambert savored that bitter sense of freedom which comes of total deprivation. — Albert Camus

What I fault newspapers for is that day after day they draw our attention to insignificant things whereas only three or four times in our lives do we read a book in which there is something really essential. Since we tear the band off the newspaper so feverishly every morning, they ought to change things and put into the paper, oh, I don't know, perhaps ... Pascal's Pensees! ... and then, in a gilt-edged volume that we open only once in ten years ... we would read that the Queen if Greece has gone to Cannes or that the Princesses de Leon has given a costume ball. This way the proper proportions would be established. — Marcel Proust

The consumer society hungers for the deviant and unexpected. What else can drive the bizarre shifts in the entertainment landscape that will keep us "buying"? Psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world. — J.G. Ballard

One day I'm lugging walls back and forth in Louisville, and the next day I'm at Cannes giving interviews next to Ben Kingsley. I'm nowhere near cynical or jaded enough not to be incredibly thrilled by that. — Chris Eigeman

Some Promised Land. The honey was there, but the milk we brought in with our goats. To people in California, God gives a magnificent coastline, a movie industry, and Beverly Hills. To us He gives sand. To Cannes He gives a plush film festival. We get the PLO. Our winters are rainy, our summers hot. To people who didn't know how to wind a wristwatch He gives underground oceans of oil. To us He gives hernia, piles, and anti-Semitism. — Joseph Heller

Vincent Gallo has put a curse on my colon and a hex on my prostate. He called me a 'fat pig' in the New York Post and told the New York Observer I have 'the physique of a slave-trader.' He is angry at me because I said his 'The Brown Bunny' was the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival ...
it is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of 'The Brown Bunny.' — Roger Ebert

Harriet loved her new persona. As Maxine, she was courageous and accomplished, a woman of sophistication equally at home in Cannes or on the Indian subcontinent. As Maxine she didn't walk, she strode; she did not merely see, but beheld. The very air she breathed was bracing. Here was a conqueror of worlds. — Diane Hammond

I don't believe in competition for artistic things. I just like the atmosphere of the Cannes festival. I don't want to win anything or lose anything. — Woody Allen

Being with Al Gore on the red carpet in Cannes was exciting - he's like a rock star unto himself! — Lawrence Bender

It took Cianfrance 12 years to bring 'Blue Valentine' to the screen after he first conceived it. He found Gosling and Williams early on, and they hung in there with him. The film finally premiered at Sundance 2010, then screened at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival before landing in theaters in December. — Katie Hafner

You don't want to meet anybody in Cannes. It's the worst place, I think, to meet somebody - one of the worst places. — Caleb Landry Jones

Every year there's a jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Getting on the jury is very competitive in France. Not because the French love cinema, but because they love to judge. — Craig Ferguson

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French. — P.G. Wodehouse

I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before. — Larry Clark

Cannes is a circus, so you have to have fun with it. Everything suddenly becomes funny. And the promotion of a movie - that's where you really need to be a good actor. You need to make journalists believe that what you're saying is just for them and you've never said it before, even when you're talking about the same film over and over again. — Mathieu Amalric

I was really nervous about people booing, because my mother had gone for a film 20 years earlier and had a terrible time with people booing, whistling, so I knew that in Cannes people can get aggressive. — Charlotte Gainsbourg

Work dominates life in Eden-Olympia, and drives out everything else. The dream of a leisure society was the great twentieth-century delusion. Work is the new leisure. Talented and ambitious people work harder than they have ever done, and for longer hours. They find their only fulfillment through work. The men and women running successful companies need to focus their energies on the task in front of them, and for every minute of the day. The last thing they want is recreation. — J.G. Ballard

Cannes is a very strange place. I tried to show up as best I could and to try not to be cynical. — Lili Taylor

Mounting those red stairs [in Cannes] is something I've done with a very different intention many times. So it's interesting any time you witness those shifts of perspective. The beach scenes were also fun. It felt very strange and very theatrical to kind of commandeer it and have La Mer booming over the speakers. — Willem Dafoe

I've been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don't know how good we're going to be received in America because that's where it's most challenging. — William Hurt

The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit. — J.G. Ballard

To be able to work with people who I have respected and admired, to be a part of something like the Cannes Film Festival, is surreal and brilliant. — Luke Evans

I think Cannes is usually pretty fair in choosing what will play well to the home festival crowd. — Eric Fellner

I actually know the moment I became known. It was at the Cannes Film Festival, when they showed 'The Virgin Spring.' I walked into that theater as one person, and I walked out as another. — Max Von Sydow

Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel. — Olivier Dahan

My dad made a film called 'Willow' when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards. — Bryce Dallas Howard

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Money is being wasted on adverts that go right over a consumer's head. They may win awards at Cannes, but they lose at the cash register. — Jerry Della Femina

I have written movies that won prizes at Cannes and Venice. — Luciano Vincenzoni

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself. — Jerry Seinfeld

Madness--that's all they have, after working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Going mad is their only way of staying sane. — J.G. Ballard

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources. — Kristin Scott Thomas

Thank fuck the camera loved him more than he loved himself.
He could recline on silk sheets for cologne or seethe in a sportscar. His life became the silk sheet he had once reclined upon: smooth, compliant and without substance. In pursuit of that something, he enterprised. His upbringing on Lake Como receded as he found himself sipping sangria on a Monte Carlo balcony, basking on his cruiser in Cannes or cheering Chelsea within a glass suite above the stands. Whether he felt dead inside wasn't up for discussion. — Charles J. Harwood

I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival. — Milos Forman

Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers. — Bob Hoffman

Then we'll take the train to Paris tonight. There is a night train, isn't there? We'll catch it at Cannes. — Francoise Sagan

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody. — Leonard Leventon

It's the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I'm sitting next to this guy who's writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called On the Sunny Side, and he's writing a review on the film, and he's obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things. So, at a certain point, he says, "So what do you do?" Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, "I kill." And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds. — Lars Von Trier

I always go to the Cannes Film Festival and it's just such a glamorous time. — Georgina Chapman

a brief respite with the family in Cannes, he road tripped with Harvard — Amber Hunt

The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet. — Harvey Pekar

Sundance felt like a natural fit. I love coming here, and I do think that this festival suits my films rather than most of the festivals I've been to. I'm not going to Cannes, you know. — Taika Waititi

The kind of sleep that I had during my own film [Certified Copy] screening in Cannes is different. It's not because of the specificity of the film. It was because of my relationship as an author to this film. Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them. Whereas this time, I didn't have that responsibility on my shoulders. — Abbas Kiarostami

The Monaco Grand Prix is in May right around the time of Cannes. — Asif Kapadia

Elle Fanning was fifteen when we started [The Neon Demon]. She turned seventeen during the shoot. Four weeks before Cannes, she turned eighteen. She had her prom at Cannes. — Nicolas Winding Refn

Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes? — Carl Sagan

Apart from 'Stoned,' I can't think of a film that's made me think, 'Blimey, that should have been at Cannes.' — Eric Fellner

When I first got to Cannes, I was very insecure about everything, so I put on this extravagant facade. Can you blame me? I was 19. — Xavier Dolan

There has never been a female director who has won an Oscar. There has only been one woman who won at the Cannes Film Festival. — Salma Hayek

When the film [Certified Copy] was in the Cannes Festival, I realized that the fact of having it shot in a different culture, in a different language, in a different setting, that wasn't mine and that I didn't belong to, gave me a totally different relationship to the film. When I was sitting in the audience during the official screening in Cannes, I didn't feel that it was my film. — Abbas Kiarostami

It's a strange thing that we're actors, and we're always playing a character, and then suddenly we're at a place like Cannes, and we're getting photographed as ourselves, and you're like, 'What do you do?' — Rachel Brosnahan

When I have to go to Cannes, that is boring to me. — Monica Bellucci

Red carpet dressing all depends on the climate. I think richer, deeper colours are more flattering on the body, but the opposite is true if you are in Cannes or St. Tropez where the light makes deep colours look heavy and unflattering. — Alice Temperley

This is what we have all come to Cannes for: for something different, experimental, a tilting at windmills, a great big pole-vault over the barrier of normality by someone who feels that the possibilities of cinema have not been exhausted by conventional realist drama. — Peter Bradshaw