Another Cannes, another scandal! This year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival has already seen its share of controversies, but that’s no surprise from the event that brought us selfie bans, high-heel outrage, and a long list of directors who can’t help but say regrettable things directly into microphones. So far in 2023 local authorities have banned protests on the Croisette during the festival (amid ongoing massive labor-reform demonstrations across France), and its chief, Thierry Frémaux, has shrugged off concerns around Johnny Depp–starring festival opener Jeanne du Barry. What else might 2023 hold in terms of shock value, unhinged public statements, and creative falls from grace? The past few decades of controversies might hold a clue. 

Lars von Trier, Almost Always

The Danish filmmaker has always been hotly debated, both for the content of his films and his button-pushing comments. His high-concept, bare-soundstage Dogville premiered in 2003 and was branded as anti-American in those intense post-9/11 years. In 2009, Antichrist shocked a foolishly unsuspecting audience with images of genital mutilation and graphic sex. His next film, Melancholia, was less outwardly shocking, but von Trier took it upon himself to produce his most infamous Cannes moment: During the film’s press conference, the auteur jokingly declared himself a Nazi. Von Trier was declared persona non grata by the festival, and would spend the next decade apologizing for or explaining the grim, glib joke. When the provocateur was ultimately welcomed back to the festival with The House That Jack Built in 2018, the Cannes audience greeted the film’s extreme violence with an almost preordained sense of outrage.

Where Are the Women?

Over the years, Cannes has drawn an increasing amount of ire for the lack of gender parity in their main competition lineup. The competition featured zero female directors as recently as 2012; Julia Ducournau’s 2021 Palme d’Or win for Titane marked only the second time a female director took the top prize, after Jane Campion’s win for The Piano. In 2018, 82 women (the same number of women-directed films that had played the main competition up to that point) from the film industry led a protest on the steps of the Palais demanding improvements, including participants such as jury president Cate Blanchett. This year, the festival features the most female directors in competition with six—still only about a third of the competition lineup. 

High Heels, High Backlash

At the 2015 festival, multiple women were reportedly barred from the world premiere of Todd Haynes’s Carol because they were wearing flats (though producer Christine Vachon made it through with her trademark combat boots). This extended to people associated with films playing the festival: Amy director Asif Kapadia claimed his wife was initially barred entry for wearing flats. Valeria Richter, whose foot had been partially amputated, also said she had been stopped for not wearing heels at the festival. Though Screen Daily reported that the festival confirmed that high heels were required for women on the red carpet, Frémaux denied that such a dress code or podal policy exists. The taste still lingers as does the appetite to push against it, with stars like Julia Roberts and Kristen Stewart having gone barefoot on the Croisette since.

Selfies Banned!

In 2018, Cannes further micromanaged its gala goings-on by banning selfies on the red carpet. Frémaux even took to calling the humble selfie “ridiculous,” “trivial,” and “grotesque,” blaming them for creating logjams on the red carpet. The result made Cannes appear to be both wildly snobbish and behind the times, making the festival seem less like the shepherd of the finest in world-class cinema and more like it just wanted to be the taste police. Perhaps almost entirely for our benefit, the stars didn’t listen.

Netflix vs. Cannes

An even more severe ban came in 2018 when Cannes barred Netflix films from appearing in competition, owing to French law that requires a period of theatrical exclusivity for films.The previous year, both Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) played in the main competition, drawing reported snickers when the Netflix logo appeared onscreen. A Netflix-produced film has yet to play on the Croisette since, though Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods was scheduled to play out of competition before the 2020 fest was canceled due to the pandemic. Frémaux maintains that Netflix is welcome to present films at the festival, just not within the competition.

Gallo vs. Ebert 

In 2003, Vincent Gallo debuted his road movie The Brown Bunny (which he directed, wrote, edited, and starred in) in competition. A reportedly already hostile crowd grew even more restless from the film’s loosely plotted meanderings and its climactic fellatio scene between Gallo and his star, Chloë Sevigny. But the hullabaloo really started when, among the many pans for the film, Roger Ebert called it the worst in Cannes history. Thus began a back-and-forth of barbs between Gallo and the critic, with Gallo reportedly placing a hex on Ebert’s colon. Ebert would later positively review the post-Cannes reedit of the film.

Boo!

Gallo has plenty of company when it comes to a hostile crowd. While it may seem gauche for the world’s most prestigious festival, booing is something of a rite of passage for many Cannes films, even those that go on to win prizes and the love of cinemagoers. You can expect the boos with a Cannes bomb like Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives or Sean Penn’s The Last Face. But even future art house hits like Marie Antoinette, The Tree of Life, and Inglourious Basterds reportedly earned their share of ire. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the standing ovations that greet every premiere become dissected for how many minutes they last.

Nothing Butt

Even with Parasite and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood making their debuts, the most extreme headlines of Cannes 2019 came courtesy of a former Palme winner, Abdellatif Kechiche. In 2013, Blue is the Warmest Color caused its own stir for its prolonged graphic sex scenes and Kechiche’s alleged behavior on set; he later sold the Palme he won for it to help fund his next work, a pair of films called Mektoub, My Love. The second film, Intermezzo, was rushed for Cannes, arriving on the Croisette with a 3.5-hour running time and a reported sexual assault investigation against Kechiche. (He denied the allegations, and French prosecutors reportedly dropped the investigation in 2020.) After its late-night premiere, critics emerged semidazed with pun-laced pans. Guy Lodge wrote in Variety: “It’s all twerk and no play”; Vulture declared it “pestilential.” “No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts,” decreed Indiewire, claiming that 60% of the running time was devoted to butts. Aside from the jeering, the film also garnered controversy for a 13-minute long, reportedly unsimulated oral sex scene between two actors. After the premiere, reports claimed that Kechiche coerced these actors with alcohol (At the time, Jezebel said Kechiche’s talent agency declined its request for comment). The film has yet to see the light of day since.

Cannes-cel Culture

Kechiche is not the only director to appear at Cannes with accusations of misconduct, sexual or otherwise. Woody Allen was invited to open the 2016 festival with Cafe Society, which prompted a fiery Hollywood Reporter column from Ronan Farrow. Roman Polanski’s road to a best-director Oscar win for The Pianist all began when that film was awarded the Palme by David Lynch’s jury in 2002; Polanski has since returned to the festival with other films.

This year already has two troublesome cases. The out-of-competition festival opener Jeanne du Barry is Johnny Depp’s first film to screen after winning his defamation trial against Amber Heard, and its director, Maïwenn, has been accused of physically assaulting a French journalist (She recently admitted to as much in an interview). Competition title Le Retour was investigated by the Cannes board for not following safeguard protocols for a minor actor filming a scene of a sexual nature, which director Catherine Corsini and producer Élisabeth Perez admitted had been an “administrative failure.” Corsini also faced reported accusations that she had harassed the crew, which she denied.

The Most Walked-Out-Of Film of 2003?

Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible is notorious not only for its story being told in reverse, but also for its graphic violence and single-take rape scene with Monica Bellucci. Armed with elements like imperceptible high-frequency sounds and dizzying camerawork, the film’s intentional audience-alienating effect was made all the more shocking in the high-class Cannes setting, resulting in a now legendary mass exodus from its world-premiere screening. Reeling from the scandalized crowd, Newsweek speculated in a piece titled “How Far Is Too Far?” that it would become “the most walked-out-of movie of 2003.”

A fake secret David Lynch movie

Ahead of last year’s edition, speculation began on Twitter that David Lynch was prepping a secret film to be a surprise inclusion in the festival. Variety had sources that claimed the film to be real, and later fanned the flames with a no-comment “coyly” smiling response from Frémaux. Though you could simply chalk it up to online rumor mills run amok, the chatter got so intense and widespread that it caused Lynch himself to publicly debunk it. 

Juries Go Their Own Way

Cannes has had its share of acrimony both within juries and between juries and the public. Was Isabelle Huppert so dictatorial over what would win their prizes that director James Gray called her a “fascist bitch”? Did Xavier Dolan single-handedly filibuster against Carol? Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman detailed his Cannes jury experience in his book Hype and Glory, in which he revealed the final Palme vote tally between Pelle the Conqueror and A World Apart. 

But the tension between audience and jury was never higher than in 1999, when Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother was the unquestioned odds-on favorite to win the Palme. The crowd’s reaction to the David Cronenberg–led jury winners—which included awarding three prizes to Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanité—was so increasingly incensed that Roger Ebert deemed the ceremony “carnage.” When Almodóvar was awarded best director, the crowd gave a standing ovation. But the worst of the crowd’s ire was reserved for the downbeat Palme winner, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Rosetta, reportedly including booing its star Émilie Dequenne as she tearfully accepted her best-actress trophy. Cronenberg later said that it was not only a unanimous decision, but that he was told it was the fastest deliberation to the Palme in Cannes history; the Dardennes have become Cannes mainstays since, with many of their films earning a Cannes prize.