A new doc­u­men­tary will go behind the scenes at the Cannes Film Festival

For cinephiles, it’s become some­thing of a pub­lic sport to scrounge up what scant details can be had from behind the scenes at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, where each year arrives with the promise of fresh dra­ma. Delib­er­a­tions often con­tentious in nature bring about the annu­al slate of pro­gram­ming and even­tu­al line­up of award-win­ners, and those look­ing in from the out­side love to savor the reports of vendet­tas and disharmony.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has revealed that Cannes spec­ta­tors will soon have more than ever to study, with a doc­u­men­tary delv­ing into the festival’s inner work­ings now on the way. Cannes Uncut will detail the cin­e­ma institution’s ​“glo­ri­ous excess­es, tri­umphs, and fail­ures,” a heart­en­ing sign that this won’t just be trumped-up PR for the film’s subject.

A team of long­time insid­ers includ­ing pro­duc­er Col­in Bur­rows, crit­ic Mark Adams, direc­tor Chris Pickard, and jour­nal­ist Richard Blan­shard are assem­bling the project, which will com­bine archival mate­ri­als com­bined with inter­views con­duct­ed at this year’s pro­ceed­ings, the long-await­ed return after the forced hia­tus of COVID-19. Their press release promis­es dish on all the ​“the great films as well as the wild par­ties; the spec­tac­u­lar pro­mo­tion­al stunts as well as the icon­ic tal­ents; the glo­ri­ous suc­cess­es and the infa­mous failures.”

Some of the more notable chap­ters of Cannes his­to­ry we can expect to be touched on include: the May ​’68 protests that brought the fes­ti­val to a halt, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la​‘s casu­al dis­own­ing of Crash​’s spe­cial jury prize in 1996 and oth­er spats among the Com­pe­ti­tion jury, per­haps a men­tion of 2015’s self­ie ban or anti-high-heel demon­stra­tions. If cur­rent fes­ti­val direc­tor Thier­ry Fré­maux has any juicy secrets to share, this would be an opti­mal venue for that.

For years, the Fred­er­ick Wise­man-style look at Cannes – a top-to-bot­tom exam­i­na­tion of how this major event comes togeth­er – has felt like an impos­si­ble dream. This new film would seem to be the next best thing, a way in to the most exclu­sive inner cir­cle of an already exclu­sive culture.

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