Hollywood in the Trump era doesn’t go to Cannes

There will be no Tom Cruise reveling in low‑level flyovers along the beach at La Croisette by the French Air Force’s aerobatic team, as happened at the 2022 premiere of Top Gun: Maverick. Harrison Ford — or a similar star — will not climb the steps of the Palais des Festivals to the beat of an iconic theme, as he did in 2023 when bidding farewell to the whip‑cracking archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. There will be no screenings of major animated films from Pixar, Disney, or Universal. There will be no parade of models and celebrities set to songs by the King of Rock, as in 2022 with Elvis. Quentin Tarantino will not arrive to showcase his vast film knowledge, as he did in 2019 with Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood.

In 2018, Solo: A Star Wars Story premiered in Cannes. Mad Max: Fury Road left audiences open‑mouthed in 2015, and its sequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, also debuted at the festival in 2024. Since 2017 — when that year was seen as an exception — Hollywood has never missed its appointment on the French Riviera. Until this May. And there is no easy fix.

It is not for lack of upcoming releases from the majors, as the big Hollywood studios are known. The Mandalorian and Grogu, another installment in the Star Wars universe, is set to reach the big screen on May 21, and a Cannes stop seemed almost obvious; Disclosure Day, by Steven Spielberg, opens on June 12 (and negotiations to include a screening there are known to have taken place); Toy Story 5 is due out on June 17; The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s take on the classic — by a director who is no friend of festival premieres — arrives in theaters on July 17; and Digger, by Alejandro González Iñárritu starring Tom Cruise, will hit Spanish cinemas on October 2. The latter has the unmistakable scent of Venice, a festival where stars are more shielded from political questions: there is, quite simply, neither the time nor the place for them to be answered.

What happened at the most recent Berlinale — where a political storm, provoked in part by the organizers and the restrictive German laws that stifle protests against Israel, swept away any meaningful debate about cinema — has given Hollywood studios even more pause for thought. Cannes offered them a major red carpet and powerful media exposure, even if that sometimes came with loud booing, harsh criticism, and stars being forced to answer political and social questions that are now especially contentious in the era of Donald Trump and his allies in the tech world.

Curiously, the technology giant Meta — owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — joined Cannes’s official sponsors on Monday.

Is the trip worth it? For this 79th edition, Hollywood has decided it is not.

“The U.S. is present, though studios less so,” Cannes Film Festival general delegate Thierry Frémaux said when announcing the festival’s program at the beginning of April. And in a more forceful tone, he added: “When the studios are less present in Cannes, they are less present, full stop.”

The festival does include cinema from the United States, it’s true. In competition are Paper Tiger, by James Gray, starring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, and Mike Teller — a mafia film distributed by Neon, a company known for steering strong Oscar campaigns — and The Man I Love, by Ira Sachs, with Rami Malek and Rebecca Hall, an indie film that has yet to secure a U.S. distributor. That’s all.

Universal Pictures proposed a Fast & Furious screening to mark its 25th anniversary, an event expected to be attended by almost the entire cast. Fremaux described this as “a wonderful idea.” And John Travolta will premiere his directing debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, in the Cannes Premiere section.

But that does not serve as a shield against the question: what is going on? Frémaux stressed that Cannes treats all films equally, regardless of their origin, and said he has no doubt that productions from the major studios will return, as they have in the past. For now, he argued, patience is required while Hollywood recovers from the effects of the strikes and the pandemic.

The U.S. industry, he noted, is in the midst of a restructuring, cutting costs and scaling back production — something Cannes has witnessed before, recalling earlier turning points such as the emergence of New Hollywood under Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Each studio, he added, follows its own release strategy, all of which he respects.

As for awards positioning, he pointed to last year’s standout titles, One Battle After Another and Sinners: Paul Thomas Anderson’s film had long been on Cannes’s radar but was delayed in post‑production, while Ryan Coogler previously premiered work at the festival. Frémaux joked that had both films made it to Cannes, their impact would have been even greater.

And traveling to the south of France is expensive. In recent years, the festival has proved far more effective at launching mid‑budget films on the road to the Oscars — regardless of where they come from (Parasite, Anora, Anatomy of a Fall, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, The Zone of Interest, or The Substance) — than it has been for U.S. titles.

In 2025, U.S. films such as The Phoenician Scheme by Wes Anderson, Die, My Love! by Lynne Ramsay, and Eddington by Ari Aster were dismissed. A24, the studio behind the latter and a company aspiring to become a new major, is also not presenting a film at this year’s Cannes. “I hope the studio films come back,” said Frémaux.

At the Berlinale, some moderators went so far as to block political questions during press conferences. In Venice, several filmmakers avoided journalists altogether; George Clooney, for instance, appeared only briefly on the red carpet at the premiere of Jay Kelly, citing health reasons to sidestep interviews.

At Cannes, Frémaux has insisted that political issues will be present on screen rather than driven by the institution itself, arguing that the festival’s political dimension should emerge through the films and the voices of their creators. He has encouraged journalists to ask freely, noting that cinema continues to address contemporary realities, as demonstrated by last year’s Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident, directed by Jafar Panahi. At the same time, he spoke of the need to respect the varied social and political positions of filmmakers, describing cinema and art as tools for dialogue in a world increasingly fragile in terms of relations between nations.

Yet even as this message was being delivered, some reporters were receiving guidance limiting interviews with Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who is competing with Parallel Tales, his first film made in exile. The two‑time Oscar winner — once closely associated with Iran’s authorities — will not address questions about current political developments in his country or its conflict with the United States.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition