On Tuesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a speech via video, which came as a surprise to a crowd of elite art people during the opening ceremony of the 75th session of the Cannes Film Festival. “Hundreds die every day. They won’t wake up once more following the applause at the end,” Zelensky told the audience, who listened to his pre-recorded message, and greeted her with a standing ovation.
Zelensky noted the power of cinema during World War II, including Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film The Great Dictator, which satirized Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. He said: “The Chaplin dictator did not destroy the real dictator, but thanks to cinema, thanks to this film, cinema did not remain silent… We need a new Chaplin to prove today that cinema is not silent. Will cinema remain silent, or will it speak? Can cinema remain outside This?”.
“One thought that everyone understood that people might be conquered by beauty, by gathering them together in front of screens, and not by ugliness and gathering them together in shelters,” said Zelensky. “One would have thought that everyone understood that the horror of a large-scale war, which might engulf the whole of Europe, would not It comes with a result. But once more, as now, there is a dictator. Once once more, there is a war for freedom.” Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his regret, before adding: “We will continue to fight, we have no other choice … I am convinced that the dictator will lose.”
The opening ceremony was presented by the actress Virginie Evira, who raised the topic of commitment in cinema: “Can cinema change the world? It is not certain. But it can change our perception of it. As a result, the world has really changed.” […] Free filmmakers are what the Festival de Cannes celebrates.
In its 75th edition, the Cannes Film Festival promised that Ukraine would be “on everyone’s mind”, and therefore it will screen selected films in this field, in the presence of two generations of Ukrainian filmmakers: Sergey Loznitsa, his “Natural History of Destruction”, regarding the Allied destruction of German cities during the war. The second world, as well as Maxime Naconcini, the owner of “Butterfly Visions” (within the shows “One Look”). At the last minute, the festival added the screening of “Mariopolis 2,” the latest film by Lithuanian director Mantas Kvidaravicos, who was murdered in early April in Ukraine.
On the other hand, the World Film Festival refuses to welcome “Russian official representatives, government authorities or journalists who represent the official line” of Russia, but said that it is always ready to welcome opposition voices, such as Kirill Serebrenkov, who will open the competition, Wednesday, with his new film “Tchaikovsky’s Wife”. As a candidate for the Palme Gold.
