00:00Does Cannes have a beef with the internet? Netflix is officially banned from the Cannes Film Festival
00:05competition, and so are selfies. When it comes to the streaming giant, film festival head
00:09Thierry Frey-Mu said that it and other streaming services can still show their films out of
00:14competition at Cannes, but they won't be in the running for a prize.
00:17Last year, when Bong Joon-ho's Okja and Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz stories were allowed
00:22in competition, the decision sparked serious uproar. French filmmakers and unions condemned
00:27the move and vowed protests, and now the festival has changed the rules for 2018.
00:32The new guidelines didn't apply in time for the screenings of the two Netflix films last May,
00:36but neither were awarded with prizes. Frey-Mu said that the decision was a risk he was willing to take,
00:41at least the first time, to keep the festival from becoming stagnant. And while he knew it would be
00:46controversial, the festival wanted to premiere the films from the two established filmmakers
00:50instead of having them go to another festival. However, he admits that he thought Netflix would
00:55bend their rules for Cannes, saying,
00:57At the time, Netflix tried to secure temporary permits to screen the films for less than a week
01:09in France, day and date, to their online releases. But that move wasn't permitted because of
01:14France's strict chronology laws, and the two sides couldn't reach an agreement.
01:18As a result, the festival has changed their rules to require theatrical release in France.
01:23Frey-Mu said that while new players like Netflix and Amazon are enabling directors to make big-budget films,
01:29they are creating what he calls hybrids, saying they aren't TV and aren't quite film. He said,
01:34Cinema still triumphs everywhere, even in this golden age of series. He added,
01:38The history of cinema and the history of the internet are two different things.
01:42But that's not the only ban. The festival head also announced a selfie ban on the Cannes Film Festival
01:48Red Carpet Friday in an interview with Le Filme Francais. After trying for years unsuccessfully
01:53to get stars and fans to stop selfie snapping at festival premieres, he's now outlawed the selfie
01:59altogether. Frey-Mu said that the untimely disorder created by the practice of selfies interferes
02:04with the experience of the red carpet and the festival as a whole. He added that cell phone snapping
02:09trivializes the grandeur of Cannes and, on a practical level, slows down foot traffic on the carpet,
02:14with crowds backed up behind self-snapping celebs. Frey-Mu has been anti-selfie for years,
02:19calling them ridiculous and grotesque. But previous calls to stop self-snapping had little impact.
02:25The 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival runs from May 8th to 19th. For the latest Cannes news,
02:30head to THR.com and let me know what you think of these two bans in the comments.
02:35Until next time, for The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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