Also in the assembled audience were Cannes President Pierre Lescure and his General Delegate Thierry Frémaux and actresses such as Rossy de Palma, Julianne Moore and the team from the opening film, “Coupez!” by Michel Hazanavicius
The president of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelenski, intervened this Tuesday in a video at the opening ceremony of the 75th Cannes Film Festival where he has asked that the cinema “not be silent” in the face of the “most terrible war since the Second World War.”
Moments after Forest Whitaker was awarded the Honorary Palme d’Or, the gala hosted by actress Virginie Efira connected live with Zelenski, who delivered a speech in which he appealed to the power of cinema to defend freedom.
«The most terrible dictators of the 20th century loved the cinema, but the only thing they have contributed is those terrible images of documentaries; We could have thought that there would be no more wars, but both then and now there was a dictator, a war against freedom, and now and before the cinema must not remain silent », he said.
Zelensky gave as an example of the involvement of cinema in the world the film “The Great Dictator” by Chaplin, released in 1940, in the middle of World War II. “We need a new Chaplin who shows that cinema is not silent” in the face of the war in Ukraine, he declared.
“We are going to continue fighting, we have no other option,” he added before the cream of European cinema, convinced that “the dictator is going to lose,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Among the audience gathered at the Grand Théâtre Lumière of the Palais des Festivals de Cannes was the entire jury, chaired by Vincent Lindon and also including Asghar Farhadi, Rebecca Hall, Ladj Ly, Jeff Nichols, Deepika Padukone, Noomi Rapace, Joachim Trier and Jasmine Trinca.
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Also the president of Cannes, Pierre Lescure, and his general delegate, Thierry Frémaux and actresses such as Rossy de Palma, Julianne Moore and the team of the inaugural film, “Coupez!” by Michel Hazanavicius.
The Ukrainian president reminded them of what happened in Mariupol. “The municipal theater was attacked by a Russian bomb, that theater was very similar to the one where you are meeting today, the people, the civilians, took refuge there.”
Zelenski said he had a very precise memory of the day this war began, on February 24, and mentioned the famous phrase from “Apocalypse Now” about the smell of napalm in the morning. “That smell can’t be mistaken,” he noted.
With information from Efe
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