Essay by Eric Worrall
This festival was reportedly dominated by visions of imaginary apocalypse, including climate crisis films.
Cannes Film Festival Power Restored After 5-Hour Outage Across South of France With Foul Play Suspected, Closing Ceremony to ‘Proceed as Planned’
By Ellise Shafer
May 24, 2025 3:06am PTThe city of Cannes was hit by a five-hour power outage on Saturday morning ahead of the film festival’s awards ceremony, with electricity finally returning around 3:30 p.m. local time. Despite the technical challenges, a festival rep previously told Variety that the closing ceremony would “proceed as planned” after the Palais des Festivals “switched to an independent power supply.”
According to Franceinfo, the cause of the outage may be foul play with two arson acts reported overnight and several power lines pylons were discovered to have been sawn off in the Alpes-Maritimes.
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Read more: https://variety.com/2025/film/festivals/cannes-film-festival-power-outage-awards-ceremony-1236409107/
What is this mysterious “independent power supply”? Western media sources might be coy about naming the agency which rescued Cannes, but on this occasion the French media were up to the challenge of reporting the news.
Power failure in Cannes and in the Alpes-Maritimes: “serious acts of degradation” are at the origin of the incident
Two arsons were reported, while three pillars of an electric pylon located in Villeneuve-Loubet were then sawn Saturday morning.
Article written byfranceinfo
France Televisions
Published on 24/05/2025 12:17 Updated on 05/24/025 16:30…
From generators at the Palais des Festivals
This incident had consequences on the Cannes Film Festival, which must end in the late afternoon with the presentation of the Palme d’Or. The screening of the film Sirât was interrupted on the Croisette on Saturday morning, reports France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (New window), which also reports disruptions in the city and at the station. But the situation is improving in the city since AFP journalists noticed the resumption of traffic lights around the Palais des Festivals in the early afternoon.
The palace is currently powered by generators – three groups will be used for the proper holding of the closing ceremony at 6 p.m.
Read more (French, translated by Apple): https://www.franceinfo.fr/faits-divers/direct-panne-de-courant-a-cannes-et-dans-les-alpes-maritimes-des-actes-malveillants-sont-a-l-origine-de-l-incident_7269978.html
What makes this more amusing, the 2025 Cannes film festival, which owes its successful conclusion to portable fossil fuel power, was dominated by depictions of imaginary apocalypse – including the fake climate crisis.
It’s the end of the world and the Cannes Film Festival does not feel fine
BY JAKE COYLE
Updated 1:33 AM AEST, May 20, 2025CANNES, France (AP) — “Is this what the end of the world feels like?”
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As much as Cannes basks in the Côte d’Azur sunshine, storm clouds have been all over its movie screens at the festival, which on Monday passed the halfway point. Portents of geopolitical doom are everywhere in a lineup that’s felt unusually in sync with the moment. Tom Cruise, in “Mission: Impossible – Final Awakening,” has battled the AI apocalypse. Raoul Peck, in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” has summoned the author’s totalitarianism warnings for today. Even the new Wes Anderson (“The Phoenician Scheme”) is about an oligarch.
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It’s not just geopolitical tremors quaking on movie screens in Cannes. Climate change and natural disasters are on the minds of filmmakers, too, sometimes in the most unlikely of movies.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/cannes-2025-doom-gloom-movies-mood-ff276fba43706e6ac48833112795ffc4
There is no news yet on the identity or motivation of the pylon saboteurs. They might have been metal thieves – metal theft is a serious problem in Europe. But who knows, perhaps they were just ordinary people who were fed up with unwatchable films which lecture the audience about the director’s woke delusions.
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