Cannes Film Festival: The ARTE Channel Goes to the Movies!

The Franco-German TV channel ARTE, a partner in many great films, is now showing its cinematic support by offering free showings of Cannes Film Festival films. This special programming will include a selection of feature-length films that have won prizes or been shown at previous festivals, as well as documentaries about the film world.

Like so many others, the world of arts and culture has been deeply affected by Covid-19. It's because of the health crisis and quarantine that the Cannes Film Festival, created in 1946 and now one of the world's most famous film festivals, had to be postponed this year.

 ARTE is paying homage, in its way, to this most prestigious of festivals by offering, for 15 days, one-of-a-kind programming focused on auteur cinema and its greatest masterpieces.

A SELECTION OF GREAT FILMS

The planned selection of 30 great films from France and around the world will include several award-winning works from past Cannes Film Festivals, and will run until May 27. Examples include The Square, a Ruben Östlund film (Palme d’or 2017);  Loveless , an Andrey Zvyagintsev film (Prix du Jury 2017); Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (Palme d'or 2009), Léonor Serraille's Montparnasse Bienvenue (Caméra d’or 2017) and Asghar Farhadi's The Past (Prix d'interprétation féminine awarded to Bérénice Béjo 2013). Other films that are just as well-known, but were not awarded prizes, will also be shown. They include the Michael Haneke film Happy End, Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, James Gray's The Immigrant  and the great classic, Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (Official Selection 1956, did not win).

THE DOCUMENTARIES THAT GO WITH THEM

For true cinema-lovers, you can't have one without the other. That's why making-ofs and other productions for film aficionados are also featured. ARTE's special selection includes documentaries about the Cannes Film Festival itself, like Cannes, le Festival Libre, a history of the festival, and making-ofs like Il était une fois…The Square and Il était une fois…Faute d’amour as well as biographies of filmmakers like Milos Forman, une vie libre.

EXPERIENCE THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL AT HOME

Other TV channels and websites offer a virtual Cannes Film Festival experience. France Télévisions will be sharing around 20 films from the Director's Fortnight on its online platform. The website Format Court offers 25 international short films, selected for the Cannes Film Festival between 1965 and 2017. Movie lovers can finally round out their knowledge with Transmettre le Cinéma, a video library run by Lux Scène International and the CNC that offers educational content with information on films to watch.

The complete program and show times are available on the ARTE website.

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