Spit, vomit and a banned baby: Cannes controversies – ranked! | Cannes film festival

20. An amputee is told off for not wearing high heels, 2015

Part of the appeal of Cannes is its sense of old-school glamour. It is, however, a shame that the glamour often comes at the expense of logic and practicality. In 2015, a group of women were barred from the gala screening of Todd Haynes’ historical lesbian romance Carol for not adhering to the rule that women must wear high heels. The same happened to producer Valeria Richter, even though part of her left foot had been amputated. A year later, Julia Roberts made her displeasure about this known by walking the red carpet barefoot.

19. Tarantino gives a heckler the finger, 1994

Cannes has developed a reputation for being a place where audiences are free to express their opinions, and film-makers are free to express them back. A perfect illustration is when Pulp Fiction won the coveted Palme d’Or in 1994, to thunderous applause. As the clapping died down, a single female voice called out “Quelle daube! Mais quelle daube! Putain, fait chier!” (roughly “What a load of crap! What a load of crap! Fucking hell, this is annoying!”). Tarantino responded by flipping her the bird.

18. Nobody takes a photo of Isabelle Adjani, 1983

Adjani was at the height of her fame in 1983, and struggled with press intrusion. As such, while in Cannes for her film One Deadly Summer, she made the decision to ditch the photocall that traditionally takes place after press conferences. This was not well received; when she arrived on the red carpet for the film’s festival screening, all the photographers put down their cameras and turned away from her.

17. The Palme d’Or winner is booed, 2011

Sometimes a film hits Cannes that fulfils the audience’s desire to boo and cheer a film. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, his first in six years and only his fifth since 1973, managed to fit the bill perfectly. The film’s meandering pace and long jags about the birth of the universe meant that it was heavily booed at its first screening for critics and reporters. Nevertheless, it won the Palme d’Or.

16. Sophie Marceau goes off-script and off-stage, 1999

If Cannes loves anything more than applauding, it’s booing. This, it turns out, is not solely limited to the films. In 1999, Sophie Marceau strolled out to present the Palme d’Or to the Dardenne brothers for their film Rosetta, and ended up embarking on a directionless ad-libbed speech that went on for two minutes and contained surprisingly few completed sentences. The audience started booing her, something that only stopped when Kristin Scott Thomas interrupted her out of pity and brought the whole sorry thing to a close.

15. Daylight robbery, 2013

Logically it would make sense for thieves to target Cannes, because every year it becomes the temporary home of several rich people who like to be photographed covered in jewels. In 2013, this came to pass. As the festival began, a safe box containing more than £660,000 worth of jewellery by the Swiss watchmaker Chopard was yanked from a hotel room, and the following week a necklace valued at £1.4m was stolen in the nearby resort of Cap d’Antibes. Two months later, when the festival was over, a thief walked into the Carlton International hotel and stole jewels and watches worth £89m, making it the biggest heist in France’s history.

14. Irréversible walkouts, 2002

Gaspar Noé’s status as a grand provocateur began with the Cannes screening of Irréversible, a revenge thriller that features an extended rape scene. Reports claimed 250 people walked out of the screening, with 20 of them requiring medical attention. Video footage of the walkouts exists, showing audience members calling the film “scandalous” and “pathetic” and describing Noé as “mentally ill”. The film did not win the Palme d’Or that year, but that might not have been down to squeamishness; the prize ultimately ended up going to Roman Polanski.

13. Kelly Rowland is hustled off the red carpet, 2024

As prestigious as it is, the Cannes film festival doesn’t always do itself a lot of favours. While all the other festivals in the world give the attending stars plenty of time to have their moment in the spotlight, Cannes has a reputation for hurrying them along. This came to a head in 2024, when Kelly Rowland reacted to an officious staffer with a full confrontation. Lip-readers claimed that Rowland shouted “Don’t talk to me like that, you’re not my mother!” as she was bustled off the carpet.

12. A director spits on a journalist, 2023

Maïwenn’s film Jeanne du Barry opened the festival in 2023, despite being more notorious for starring Johnny Depp in his first big role since he lost a libel case over a newspaper article that called him a wife-beater in 2020. However, the biggest controversy about the film came in the days after it was announced as the festival opener, when Maïwenn saw Edwy Plenel – the editor of investigative news website Mediapart – in a restaurant. The film-maker reportedly pulled Plenel’s head back by his hair and spat into his face. She was fined €400 (£346) and told to pay Mediapart €1,500 (£1,300) in moral damages.

11. Maurice Pialat gets booed while winning, 1987

Director Maurice Pialat won the Palme d’Or for his film Under the Sun of Satan, about a priest going through a very intense crisis of faith. News reports called the win one of the most controversial in the history of cinema. Widely booed as his name was announced, Pialat responded by telling the audience: “If you don’t like me, then I don’t like you either.”

10. A four-month-old baby is banned, 2019

Of all the numerous and varied ways that Cannes is a bit backwards when it comes to its treatment of women, this feels like one of the most egregious. In 2019, British director Greta Bellamacina attempted to enter the festival – where her film was screening – with her four-month-old son. She was refused entry. After what she described as “much stressful debate”, the festival came to a compromise: her son would need to be treated as a delegate, and therefore purchase a £260 pass which would take 48 hours to be approved. A Cannes spokesperson at the time said that the decision was made in error.

9. Spike Lee tells Wim Wenders he’s ‘waiting for his ass’, 1989

Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee’s third film, was critical and commercial rocket fuel, gaining rave reviews and making its money back six times over. As a result, Lee was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe, and the film won a Special Distinction Independent Spirit award. But nothing annoyed him like not winning the Palme d’Or. Even though Roger Ebert said “If this doesn’t win the grand prize, I’m not coming back next year”, the prize went to Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape. Lee took the loss personally, saying of the jury president: “Wim Wenders had better watch out ’cause I’m waiting for his ass. Somewhere deep in my closet I have a Louisville Slugger bat with Wenders’ name on it.”

8. Two bare breasts and a couple of broken legs, 1954

A young star thirsty for fame, Simone Silva hit paydirt when Cannes awarded her the honorary title of Miss Festival for its seventh outing in 1954. Part of her duties involved being part of a photoshoot on the beach with Robert Mitchum. However, midway through the shoot, Silva took her top off and started cupping her breasts, causing such a commotion that two photographers ended up with broken limbs in the melee to secure the best shot. Appalled, Cannes asked Silva to leave the festival. She died of a stroke three years later, at the age of 29.

7. Sean Penn’s sombre African drama is laughed off the screen, 2016

Booing is one thing, but it must hurt all the more to have your film actually laughed at during a screening, pretty much from the get-go. This was the fate that befell Sean Penn’s The Last Face, a tone-deaf love story about two white doctors (played by Javier Bardem and Penn’s then girlfriend, Charlize Theron) working in west Africa. The jeering was followed by a first wave of universally damning reviews, and then by a press conference where everybody looked shell-shocked and mortified, and an official premiere so utterly funereal that Cannes promptly banned journalists from publishing any reviews until after the red carpet.

Before becoming famous, Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays was imprisoned for poisoning 3,000 pigeons in Manchester. It’s a vignette retold in Michael Winterbottom’s Tony Wilson biopic. Someone on the film’s team thought it would be fun to reenact the stunt at Cannes, and ordered some fake dead pigeons. However, the pigeons were apparently much more realistic than anyone expected, which caused outrage when they were duly hurled about at a restaurant. At the time, Variety reported that “a pigeon landed on the table of a top French TV honcho. Security guards threatened the actors with cans of mace. Joel and Ethan Coen, also lunching at the restaurant, reportedly were highly amused.”

5. The Brown Bunny, 2003

The Brown Bunny has become notorious for the sequence in which director, writer, cinematographer, editor, producer and star Vincent Gallo receives unsimulated fellatio from Chloë Sevigny. Its reputation began during a rollercoaster of a Cannes screening, during which the audience sarcastically clapped Gallo’s acting and whistled every time his name appeared in the credits. After watching it, Roger Ebert called it the worst film in the festival’s history. Gallo’s recollection varies. After the screening, he apologised for the film, stating that “it is a disaster of a film and it was a waste of time”. Later, however, he claimed that it also received a 15-minute ovation.

4. The 82-woman protest, 2018

The festival’s problem with women peaked in 2018, the year after #MeToo, when a number of high-profile attenders spoke out about its underrepresentation of female directors. The centrepiece of the protest came when 82 women, including Cate Blanchett, Kristen Stewart and Salma Hayek, made a stand on the red carpet in solidarity. Why 82? Because, as Blanchett noted, while 1,688 male directors had walked the red carpet between 1946 and 2018, only 82 female directors had enjoyed the same privilege. Similarly, the Palme d’Or had been won by 71 male directors, but just two female directors – Justine Triet became only the third in 2023 for Anatomy of a Fall.

3. The jury president vomits over a film, 1973

Cannes can be a fiery place for a film-maker. But no director ever enjoyed a reception quite as ugly as Marco Ferreri. His 1973 film La Grande Bouffe, about a group of friends who attempt to eat themselves to death (sometimes at the point of ejaculation), was so deliberately repellent that its screening was marred by booing, heckling and, legend has it, jury president Ingrid Bergman being physically sick. According to New York magazine, a critic punched Ferreri in the face as soon as the film ended, leading to “the two of them rolling on the floor in near-mortal combat”.

2. Shutdown five days before curtain up, 1968

Cannes was not immune to the wave of social unrest that tore through France in May 1968. Heavyweights such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle and Claude Lelouch argued that a fancy film festival would look out of touch against the backdrop of student protests and police violence. Jury members resigned, directors withdrew their films, and Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin were so desperate to stop their film Peppermint Frappé from screening that they clung to the curtains of the cinema in protest. The festival ended up being officially cancelled five days before its scheduled conclusion, with no prizes awarded.

1. Lars von Trier’s solidarity with Hitler, 2011

What else could it possibly be? During a press conference for his own film Melancholia, Lars von Trier made a string of deeply contentious announcements. “I understand Hitler” was the most clippable, although he also mentioned that – after thinking he was Jewish – “I found out that I was really a Nazi, which also gave me some pleasure.” It wasn’t just the biggest scandal in Cannes history, but one of the most bizarre acts of unprompted self-immolation you’re ever likely to see. Watching it back today, 15 years after it happened, you still find yourself feeling desperately sorry for Kirsten Dunst, sitting next to him, plainly wishing that she was anywhere else on Earth.