Cannes Film Festival
European productions made their mark in the 69th edition of Cannes Film Festivaly. The festival took place from 11-22 May and it was once again a wonderful opportunity to celebrate creativity.
The Palme d’Or award went to the Creative Europe MEDIA supported film ‘I, Daniel Blake’, while the Best Director Award (ex-aequo) was handed out to Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu and Olivie Assayas, for their movie Personal Shopper. The Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize was awarded this year to another co-production, The Red Turle. Also, this year Cannes was dominated, across all sections, by U.S, France and Romania who had the most number of films present in Cannes. The festival also held its share of business meetings and conferences. The European Commission Vice-President Ansip addressed the audience at the CNC event on ‘Funding creation: what to expect from Digital Economy’. He reiterated that the rules of the game should keep up with technology and identified the main ways the EU can support the creative industry in widening its exposure. He mentioned namely through funding programmes such as MEDIA but also the ongoing Commission work on Digital Single Market and, specifically, copyright and audiovisual media services. Another event organised by the festival under the NEXT framework, saw Martin Dawson from Creative Europe arguing that the European film industry does not appeal to young audiences with others on the panel stressing the challenges that the young generation of film producers face in Europe. FIAD was also present at a conference on ‘Can cultural diversity flourish without territoriality? organised by a number of organisations, where the Oxera study was launched. At the event, MEP Viviane Reding argued for taking measures to protect European cultural diversity and also emphasised that ‘co-productions are the DNA of Europe’.
Overall, it was a very busy and interesting week just before the European Commission published a number of legislative proposals and communications which could change certain rules for the industry.
