The Cannes-Net­flix stale­mate con­tin­ues with a full shutout in 2019

At film fes­ti­vals, when the col­or­ful stri­a­tions of the Net­flix logo appear onscreen pri­or to an offi­cial selec­tion, there’s usu­al­ly an audi­ence reac­tion. It’s a mix of incred­u­lous snorts (some of which, full dis­clo­sure, are com­ing from me), mut­ed grum­bling, and what­ev­er sound eye-rolling makes.

The ambi­ent atmos­phere of hos­til­i­ty towards the stream­ing bar­bar­ians at the gates of cin­e­ma is nev­er more evi­dent than at Cannes, which has emerged as the great­est cul­tur­al chal­lenger to the stream­ing giant’s indus­try suprema­cy. Just today, Vari­ety broke the news that the elite French fes­ti­val will once again bar all Net­flix films from con­sid­er­a­tion in or out of Competition.

In terms of imme­di­ate ram­i­fi­ca­tions, this deci­sion means that at the 2019 fes­ti­val, we will see nei­ther hide nor hair of Steven Soder­bergh​‘s Pana­ma Papers film The Laun­dro­mat, the Safdie broth­ers‘ crime thriller Uncut Gems, David Michod​‘s Shake­speare­an epic The King, Noah Baum­bach​‘s mys­tery-shroud­ed lat­est, or Mar­tin Scors­ese​‘s gang­ster pic­ture The Irishman.

But in a big-pic­ture sense, this is mere­ly the lat­est chap­ter in the ongo­ing saga of oppo­si­tion between the enter­tain­ment industry’s most exclu­sive insti­tu­tion and its least.

In 2017, when Netflix’s Okja and The Meyerowitz Sto­ries played in Com­pe­ti­tion, French the­ater own­ers cried foul that these films would nev­er see the light of pro­jec­tion at local brick-and-mor­tar movie hous­es. The Cannes coor­di­na­tors, in no small way the stew­ards of cin­e­ma in France, listened.

The acri­mo­ny came to a head last year, when the festival’s head hon­cho Thier­ry Fré­maux made the exec­u­tive deci­sion to pro­hib­it those films with­out a plan in place for the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion in France, effec­tive­ly ren­der­ing the Croisette a no-Net­flix zone. He drew a line in the sand for the stat­ed pur­pose of defend­ing the sanc­ti­ty of the the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence, but the fall­out sug­gests a rival­ry slight­ly more personal.

Instead of pony­ing up the rel­a­tive­ly mod­est sum required to get such Cannes shoo-ins as Roma in French the­aters for an oblig­a­tory run, Net­flix dug in their heels and refused to go along with the demands. (“It’s the prin­ci­ple of the thing!” said some­one, some­where, prob­a­bly.) Over the last year, the con­flict between them has ossi­fied into a wider and more sym­bol­ic reck­on­ing: between the elit­ists and the pop­ulists, between le cin­e­ma and lap­top movies, between Euro­pean and North Amer­i­can sensibilities.

Variety’s item men­tions Fre­maux and Net­flix head Ted Saran­dos shar­ing an ami­ca­ble Tin­sel­town din­ner ear­li­er this month, imply­ing that the nego­ti­a­tions have been friend­ly and peace­able. Be that as it may, to an out­side observ­er, the bat­tle con­tin­ues to rage. And in this clash of extreme­ly wealthy titans, who’s the only real los­er? The peo­ple, of course, both the Cannes atten­dees miss­ing out on big-tick­et releas­es due to stub­born­ness and the tick­et-buy­ers who may nev­er get the chance to see the cream of the crop as they were meant to be seen — in a giant, dark room.

This year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val will take place from 14 through 25 May.