Cannes, the festival of perpetual party | Culture

There are many Cannes in Cannes. There is the film festival, the largest in the world, which runs until Saturday, with three others taking place in parallel: the Filmmakers’ Fortnight, the Critics’ Week and Acid. There is the cinema market, which expands from the basements of the Palais to the apartments of La Croisette. There are the red carpets of the galas, events that already operate almost independently, with models and influencers devouring the space of the stars, in an endless promotion that this year has even included the passing of the Olympic torch. There are the meetings and evening get-togethers on the different marked beaches into which the sand of La Croisette is divided: each hotel, brand and even restaurant has a piece of that treasure. And finally there is the most exclusive and striking Cannes: that of the night parties, that of people crowding behind doors closed to mortals, with music and VIP guests, whose conversations only remain the clues that it publishes daily Magazine Gala-Croisette in its section, never better named, Gimme The Night.

In Cannes, the nighttime parties surpass any adjective in quantity and quality: fashion, jewelry and beverage brands throw themselves into wild celebrations of the night. Many stars travel to Cannes just to walk the red carpet and dazzle at the evening afterwards. And while at the Oscars the agapes are held in a handful of days prior to the ceremony and on the night of the gala, in Cannes there are 12 days of festival with a dozen banquets, dinners and daily celebrations. And to enter them, not even being on the list or having a physical invitation opens the doors for you: like on airplanes, the overbooking triumphs and instead there is strict control of capacity.

The cannoises They have always been familiar with the list of the main parties: amfAR (the most spectacular, mythical and select), Choppard, Kering’s Women in Motion dinner and, in recent years, Campari and Magnum. But each edition a fashion or alcoholic beverage brand is added, or any charitable initiative: one year Belvedere vodka, as an example, took Cyndi Lauper to Cannes to give a benefit concert for the foundation that Bono sponsors against childhood AIDS . That is, they related a brand to a social struggle through someone charismatic. In this field, the best party, the most anticipated, the one that brings together the most celebrities, and therefore the best known, is the amfAR gala—acronym for American Foundation for AIDS Research—, which emerged from the foundation that Elizabeth Taylor created in 1985 to fight against AIDS, and that this Wednesday night celebrated its 30th gala in Cannes. It takes place in a suburban village, and funds are raised while several stars perform during a dinner: last night the host was Demi Moore and Jess Glynne, Nick Jonas and, in a special moment, Cher sang. “One of my best memories of parties in Cannes is the one at amfAR in 2018, it was incredible because of the level of the guests,” recalls Orson Salazar, and he knows what he is talking about.

Salazar organizes the most exclusive Goya party through his company Bululú, created in 2018. Since last year he has also developed a nighttime meeting of Spanish cinema in collaboration with Campari as a sponsor. “And in 2025 we will also be at the Berlin festival,” he says after six days of work on the Côte d’Azur. Campari has made a strong commitment to Cannes in recent years: it has added a space on the fourth floor of the Palais to its private beach. The red of its room stands out on the white, glass façade, so that from the street anonymous spectators can see that there is revelry and celebrities there. “For a great party you must take care of the space and the sponsor. And from there, pamper the call, let the right people go. I feel that I have been lucky with all the elements,” says Salazar. “It seems important to me that each party serves to unite a community and obtain something more: in Cannes there was no specific event for Spanish cinema, and we had to change that. For this reason, I have joined forces with institutions and creators, and I am open to anyone who wants to join.” Salazar has lived for many years in Los Angeles with his partner, actress Paz Vega, and there he discovered that after “each event there was a perfectly organized celebration, something that was not even considered in Spain.”

Carlos Gómez, director of Gala-Croisette, points out a trend: “There are no longer parties as wild and eccentric as those before. People don’t even go that crazy on yachts. The celebrations are now medium in size. They do well for the festival, but they focus more on the red carpets.” In journalistic access to the celebrations, “social networks matter a lot. Gala He has more than 11 million followers on TikTok. There are celebrities who didn’t take a photo before and now they sign up for a video.” And he assures that these events are increasingly relying “on the exchange of services, between the sponsor who provides the money and the sponsored party who adds their image.” He win-win neoliberal “has devoured cinema.”

In this example of combining event-artists-going beyond, the three days of Women in Motion organized by Kering, a group of luxury French commercial companies created by businessman François Pinault, stand out. As a close to those days of debates, on May 19 they awarded Donna Langley, president of the NBCUniversal empire, at a dinner, and that dinner was attended by the most select who’s who of this Cannes: all the members of the competition jury, with their President Greta Gerwig at the helm, and at her side Omar Sy (who has not missed a single one this year), and with Julianne Moore, Justine Triet, Uma Thurman, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Salma Hayek, Michelle Yeoh, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Jacques Audiard, Rossy de Palma, Diane Kruger, Judith Godrèche and the French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati.

Another classic is Choppard, the jewelry company that sponsors the event and produces the palms that are awarded as prizes. It is a more classic, more relaxed meeting, which on Tuesday the 21st took place at the Cap-Eden-Roc hotel, in Cap d’Antibes, a little more than a dozen kilometers from Cannes, and in which, after a parade of 77 jewels in tribute to the number of editions of the contest, the dinner was enlivened by performances by José Carreras and Gloria Gaynor. Even crazier is Magnum’s party on his beach. In this 2024, developed last Thursday, the dress code had to adhere to the concepts Euphoria, wonder and chill, names of the three new ice creams they are launching this summer. There were guests as eclectic as Iggy Pop, Dulceida, the singer Charli XCX or the German model Toni Gaarn, and performances as varied as Mika, Justice, the drag french nicky doll and DJ Mura Masa. As it could not be less, more people stayed on the sidewalk of the promenade trying to enter than accessed the event: the masses at the door give an image of exclusivity.

On the other hand, the afternoon that commemorated Searchlight’s 30th birthday last Sunday was somewhat lackluster compared to the top-of-the-line dinner with which Sony celebrated Columbia’s 100 years of existence on Saturday the 18th: the omnipresent Greta Gerwig, directors such as JC Chandor, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Jason Reitman, Chloé Zhao or Will Gluck, and actors such as Laurence Fishburne, Woody Harrelson, Isabelle Huppert. The dinner had been preceded—in the typical Cannes combination of business and cinephilia—by the screening at Cannes Classics of the restored version of Gilda, one of Columbia’s iconic titles.

Every film, every event, almost every major production company organizes its own meeting. Every night the Albane terrace, on the roof of the Marriott hotel, brings together the members of one of the films in competition. Everything can be shown off with pride: BMW opted for the presentation of the house’s first electric vehicle designed with haute couture materials (the car was surrounded, for example, by Naomi Campbell, the composer Hans Zimmer and the actress Nathalie Emmanuel). Every night, venues such as the Medusa cabaret restaurant burst with joy and dancing, and at the doors of La Villa, a mansion where the crews of the films that have been seen that day in the Fortnight gather, people are crowded together pushing to reach their seats. inside. The point is to enter, and be seen.

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