Last Thursday, April 13, the selection for the two competitive sections of the Cannes Film Festival was published, comprising the Official Competition and Un Certain Regard. This year, the world’s most important festival celebrates its 70th anniversary.
The Cannes Film Festival is essential for the distribution of both selected feature films and short films. In addition to the sections that are part of the festival, there are other parallel competitions organized by different organizations, such as the Critics’ Week, organized by the French Union of Film Critics and dedicated to first and second films, the Directors’ Fortnight, organized by the Society of Film Directors (Societé des Realisateurs de films, SRF), and the ACID Awards (Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion).
In total, there are six competitions dedicated to feature films:
- Cannes Film Festival – Competition
- Cannes Film Festival – Un Certain Regard
- Critics’ Week
- Directors’ Fortnight
- ACID Awards
When facing film distribution, it is important to know the festivals and their programming well, and of course, Cannes is fundamental for understanding current cinema trends. To write this post, I have reviewed the selections of feature films in both festival competitions over the last decade, from 2007 to 2017. During these years, 417 films have been selected, not counting out-of-competition screenings.
The number of selected films has remained stable over these years, between 20 and 18 titles annually, with 2017 registering the lowest number with 18 in the Official Selection and 16 in Un Certain Regard. In this comparative chart, you can observe the evolution in the number of films in competition since 2007:
In the evolution over these years, we can see several constants of the festival, such as the support for filmmakers’ careers; of the 327 directors who have participated, no fewer than 66 have repeated, and 17 have done so with 3 or more films. The director with the most participations in the Official Selection has been Ken Loach, with 5 selected films, followed by Naomi Kawase, with 4 in Official, and one in Un Certain Regard.
This is the list of the 17 directors who have achieved up to three selections in both competitions (you can hover over the bars to see the total figures):
The only Spanish directors have been Pedro Almodóvar with 3 films in the Official Selection, Jaime Rosales, with two films in Un Certain Regard, and Isabel Coixet, with only one participation in the Official Selection.
Regarding the countries with the highest number of selections, France wins by a landslide, with 99 participations, 49 more than the United States, the second country with the most selections in both competitions, followed by South Korea, Japan, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom. In the case of co-productions, I have only considered the main production country.
In this chart, you can see the 20 countries with the most presence at the festival. Spain ranks 18th along with Belgium. Cannes’ tendency to support its own cinema is undeniable:
Here you can also see the world map with all the countries that have had a film at Cannes (you can also hover over it to see the totals):
It is interesting to see the number of co-productions; no fewer than 92 films have been produced by more than one country. In this case, Spain has participated mainly in co-productions with Argentina, up to three times, with only two exceptions: 7 Days in Havana, with France, and Salt of the Sea, with Palestine, Belgium, and France.
In this area of co-productions, France also stands out the most, with 41 films involving French production companies, which must be added to the previous 99 films, raising the figure to no less than 140 films, out of the total of 417 selected.
To analyze this data, I created a document with the complete list of films that have participated in Cannes during these years. You can view and download the document in Google Docs via this link.
I would love to receive your comments, whether you detect any errors or wish to provide additional data.