Does Net­flix deserve a place at Cannes?

The Cannes Film Fes­ti­val has banned Net­flix from enter­ing films into this year’s offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion. In retal­i­a­tion, the stream­ing giant has threat­ened to snub the fes­ti­val alto­geth­er by with­draw­ing five fea­tures pre­vi­ous­ly eyed for a berth at the pres­ti­gious fort­night-long event.

Cannes did screen two Net­flix titles in 2017 – Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Sto­ries – much to the cha­grin of crit­ics and tra­di­tion­al dis­trib­u­tors: as the lights dimmed, a frosty fes­ti­val audi­ence began boo­ing the sec­ond the Net­flix logo appeared on the screen.

To pla­cate dis­grun­tled crowds, the festival’s artis­tic direc­tor Thier­ry Fré­maux has announced that any film nom­i­nat­ed for the Palme d’Or in 2018 must have the­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion in France. But French law only per­mits movies to be shown on stream­ing sites 36 months after the­atri­cal their release, mak­ing it a hope­less sit­u­a­tion for the likes of Net­flix and Amazon.

There are a cou­ple of argu­ments as to why stream­ing-only titles should not be allowed to com­pete at Cannes. First­ly, com­pa­nies like Net­flix are active­ly entic­ing crowds away from cin­e­mas, so block­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion will pro­tect the rela­tion­ship between film­mak­ers and the­atre oper­a­tors. Sec­ond­ly, under-threat the­atres pro­vide an unri­valled view­ing expe­ri­ence – one that is wor­thy of preser­va­tion. (It’s worth not­ing that Cannes has under­lined its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing cin­e­ma by offer­ing 1,000 com­pli­men­ta­ry fes­ti­val badges to young cinephiles.)

But the fact remains: a lot of peo­ple choose to watch movies via stream­ing ser­vices, on a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent devices. Deny­ing dig­i­tal dis­trib­u­tors alto­geth­er means that the fes­ti­val runs the risk of alien­at­ing the wider film-lov­ing pub­lic, while at the same time dele­git­imis­ing the work and exclud­ing the artists behind it.

In the cur­rent cli­mate, it’s tougher than ever for an orig­i­nal con­cept to secure finan­cial back­ing: in many cas­es, stu­dios only con­sid­er dis­trib­ut­ing a film when it been inde­pen­dent­ly financed. Net­flix takes a gam­ble on both emerg­ing voic­es and estab­lished tal­ent and rou­tine­ly res­cues projects from devel­op­ment hell.

Bypass­ing stu­dios to con­nect audi­ences with a greater vari­ety of film con­tent is com­mend­able. But Net­flix is in a tricky sit­u­a­tion: they want to forge their own path using dis­rup­tive meth­ods, yet they crave – and in fact need – the industry’s approval if they are to con­tin­ue attract­ing high-pro­file film­mak­ers and dis­cern­ing audiences.

The company’s cur­rent mod­el forces film­mak­ers to choose between finan­cial sup­port and cre­ative free­dom, and the pres­tige the comes with par­tic­i­pat­ing in major film fes­ti­vals around the world. It looks increas­ing­ly like­ly that Net­flix will at some point be forced to reach a com­pro­mise, pos­si­bly by fac­tor­ing in the­atri­cal runs for their high­er-pro­file orig­i­nal releas­es, some­thing which they have already tri­alled in North America.

On the oth­er hand, should fes­ti­vals them­selves be more open to chang­ing con­sumer habits? As Cannes fes­ti­val direc­tor Thier­ry Fré­maux told the Hol­ly­wood Reporter recent­ly, ​“We have to take into account the exis­tence of these pow­er­ful new play­ers: Ama­zon, Net­flix and maybe soon Apple.” He goes on to say that stream­ing-only films are more like ​“hybrids” between movies and TV shows, and that, ​“Cin­e­ma [still] tri­umphs every­where, even in this gold­en age of series.”

For now Net­flix and Cannes appear to have reached an impasse. But despite their ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences, there is one point both sides agree on. Echo­ing Fré­maux, Net­flix boss Ted Saran­dos observed in 2015 that, ​“Noth­ing on Net­flix can com­pete with want­i­ng to go out to the movies with your girl­friend. If you don’t want to put on your shoes, noth­ing in the the­aters can com­pete with Netflix.”

Where do you stand on the Cannes ver­sus Net­flix debate? Have your say @LWLies