The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may not screen at Cannes after all…

You’ve got to feel for Ter­ry Gilliam: fol­low­ing a noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult pro­duc­tion peri­od, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was announced as the clos­ing film for the 71^st Cannes Film Fes­ti­val – only for its fate to be thrown into uncer­tain­ty by a law­suit tak­en out against the director.

Pro­duc­er Paulo Bran­co and his com­pa­ny Alfama Films Pro­duc­tion are look­ing to block the film’s world pre­mière next month due to an ongo­ing dis­pute over the rights to the project. Accord­ing to a state­ment released by AFP, the film can­not be ​“exploit­ed” with­out ​“pre-agree­ment from Alfama Films Production.”

Ama­zon Stu­dios, who own the US dis­tri­b­u­tion rights to the film, have yet to com­ment on this lat­est neg­a­tive turn of events, but Cannes fes­ti­val chief Thier­ry Fré­maux has respond­ed to AFP’s claims with a strong­ly-word­ed press release in which he states that it is now, ​“more impor­tant than ever to remem­ber that artists need us to sup­port them, not attack them.” Here’s Frémaux’s state­ment in full:

On April 25, Paulo Bran­co and his pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Alfama Films took legal action aimed at pre­vent­ing the planned screen­ing of Ter­ry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote on Sat­ur­day, May 19 at the clos­ing event of the 2018 Fes­ti­val de Cannes.

The legal appli­ca­tion will be con­sid­ered at an urgent hear­ing next Mon­day, May 7: the day before the Fes­ti­val opens.

As Mr Bran­co has so far been very promi­nent in the media and legal spheres it seems nec­es­sary to state the rea­sons which led us to choose the film and risk action by the pro­duc­er, whose lawyer, Juan Bran­co, likes to point out that his image and his cred­i­bil­i­ty are essen­tial­ly built on his numer­ous appear­ances at Cannes and by his close­ness to the great auteurs hon­oured by the Fes­ti­val. The lat­ter is true, which adds to our bemusement.

Dur­ing the win­ter, just as The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was pre­sent­ed to us by Ter­ry Gilliam, by the sales com­pa­ny Kinol­o­gy Films and by the dis­trib­u­tor Océan Films, Mr Bran­co informed us of his legal action against the direc­tor, fol­low­ing the break­down of rela­tions between them after the film’s pre-production.

Such legal dis­putes are not unusu­al. The Fes­ti­val is reg­u­lar­ly informed of them, but it is not in its remit to take a posi­tion on these sorts of mat­ters. There­fore, after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and because it seemed pos­si­ble the film would be released at the same time, we decid­ed to fea­ture this work in the Offi­cial Selection.

The Fes­ti­val de Cannes’ mis­sion is to choose works pure­ly on artis­tic grounds and the selec­tion must, above all, be with the agree­ment of the film’s direc­tor. This is the case here. Past expe­ri­ence had made us aware of pos­si­ble legal action and of the risks we were run­ning, but as it hap­pens, when we took our deci­sion, there was no oppo­si­tion to the screen­ing of the film at the Festival.

We there­fore did not act care­less­ly or in any way ​“force mat­ters” as Mr Juan Bran­co has said in the press. Our entire pro­fes­sion knows that ​“forc­ing mat­ters” has always been Mr Branco’s favourite method, and we should recall that he organ­ised a press con­fer­ence a few years ago where he denounced the Fes­ti­val de Cannes because it had not kept a ​“promise to select” one of his films. This was an accu­sa­tion which didn’t go any­where, because the Fes­ti­val does not make promis­es to select films: it either selects them or it does not. Today, Mr Bran­co has allowed his lawyer to use intim­i­da­tion and defam­a­to­ry state­ments, as deriso­ry as they are ridicu­lous, one of which tar­gets the for­mer Pres­i­dent of an event which he has made use of through­out his career to estab­lish his own reputation.

The Fes­ti­val de Cannes will respect the legal deci­sion, what­ev­er it may be, but we strong­ly affirm that we stand square­ly on the side of film­mak­ers and in par­tic­u­lar on the side of Ter­ry Gilliam. We know how impor­tant this project, which has gone through so many tri­als and tribu­la­tions, is to him. The trou­ble were caused on this last occa­sion by the actions of a pro­duc­er who has shown his true colours once and for all dur­ing this episode and who has threat­ened us, via his lawyer, with a ​“humil­i­at­ing defeat”.

Defeat would be to suc­cumb to threats. At a time when two film­mak­ers invit­ed to take part in the Offi­cial Selec­tion are under house arrest in their own coun­tries, at a time when Wanuri Kahiu’s film Rafi­ki, which is part of the Offi­cial Selec­tion, has just been struck by cen­sor­ship in Kenya, the coun­try where it was pro­duced, it is more impor­tant than ever to remem­ber that artists need us to sup­port them, not attack them. That has always been the tra­di­tion of the Fes­ti­val de Cannes and so it will remain.

The screen­ing at the clos­ing event of the Fes­ti­val is sub­ject to the deci­sion of the judge at the hear­ing on May 7. The release of 300 copies of the film in France is cur­rent­ly sched­uled for Sat­ur­day, May 19.

The Fes­ti­val de Cannes calm­ly awaits the court’s decision.

Pierre Les­cure, Pres­i­dent, & Thier­ry Fré­maux, Gen­er­al Delegate.