Cannes Film Festival Quotes

There has never been a female director who has won an Oscar. There has only been one woman who won at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Salma Hayek

I actually know the moment I became known. It was at the Cannes Film Festival, when they showed 'The Virgin Spring.' I walked into that theater as one person, and I walked out as another. ~ Max Von Sydow

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! ~ Leonard Leventon

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. ~ Roger Ebert

I love the Cannes Film Festival. From the lavish parties and events to the red carpet attire, this star-studded week-long event is where I get a lot of inspiration for hair and fashion. ~ Tabatha Coffey

When I met Bono at the Cannes Film festival while I was there for the film 'United 93,' he said to me, 'That's a great film, brother. Thank you for your courage in making it.' I plotzed. ~ David Alan Basche

My dad made a film called 'Willow' when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards. ~ Bryce Dallas Howard

Each year we go to the Cannes film festival and I tend to have all my friends pile in the back of my car and we'll drive from London. The poor production company think they're only putting me up and suddenly they've got eight people sleeping on my hotel room floor. ~ Jeremy Irvine

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody. ~ Leonard Leventon

Every year there's a jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Getting on the jury is very competitive in France. Not because the French love cinema, but because they love to judge. ~ Craig Ferguson

I quite like that people tend not to know my name. I remember being at the Cannes film festival for 'All or Nothing.' I looked very different in the film - I had a little greasy bob and no makeup. I went to a dinner after the screening, and everyone completely ignored me. I got a real buzz out of that. ~ Lesley Manville

I'll never forget the first screening at the Berlin Film Festival. As soon as the film ended there was an outbreak of booing, which made us look at each other with some surprise. ~ John Schlesinger

Bryan gaped, as though that was more than he'd been expecting. "Oh. Okay. Well, um, there's a silent film festival downtown next week. Do you think you'd want to go?"
I shook my head. "No, I don't think so. I respect it as an art form but really don't get much out of watching them."
"Huh. Okay." He smoothed his hair back again, and I could almost see him groping for thoughts. Why on earth was he asking me about silent films? "What about Starships 30? It opens Friday. Do you want to see that?"
" I don't really like sci-fi either," I said. It was true, I found it completely implausible.
Bryan looked ready to rip that shaggy hair out. "Is there any movie out there you want to see?"
I ran through a mental list of current entertainment. "No. Not really." The bell rang, and with a shake of his head, Bryan slunk back to his desk. "That was weird," I muttered. "He has bad taste in movies." Glancing beside me, I was startled to see Julia with her head down on the desk while she shook with silent laughter. "What?"
"That," she gasped. "That was hilarious."
"What?" I said again. "Why?"
"Sydney, he was asking you out! ~ Richelle Mead

In 2009, I went to Cannes with a short film in the Kodak emerging program at the American Pavilion. ~ Ryan Coogler

Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival. ~ Austin Peck

The Singapore Media Festival brings together the most important Film and TV events in Singapore under one umbrella. With media convergence, I foresee that the SMF will encompass even more content formats in future, and will keep Singapore on the cutting-edge of media development. I am confident the SMF will be a signature media event for Singapore and the world for many years to come. ~ Calvin Cheng

American Horrors is one of the only shows out there showcasing the best new talent working the genre. It's also one hell of a good time"
~Michael J. Hein/NYC Horror Film Festival Founder/Director ~ Michael J. Hein

Tribeca Film Festival Doha will be both an industry festival and an audience festival, not just an event for insiders. Community outreach will be a major part of what we're doing. We'll put filmmakers in touch with local, regional, and international audiences. ~ Craig Hatkoff

New York is the perfect place for a film festival because there's already so much energy and life here, and New Yorkers love movies. ~ Clark Gregg

If you go to a film festival and watch a bunch of features and then watch a bunch of shorts, you will almost always find that the shorts are where people are taking more risks and pushing more boundaries ... simply because they have much less to lose. ~ Don Hertzfeldt

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good. ~ Karen Allen

I took part in a theatre festival in Massachusetts two summers after I graduated from college. Then I was in Los Angeles thinking: "I'm going to go to New York." I'd decided that I would not have a chance of a film career, so I was about to make the move. I bought a plane ticket and found a place to live in New York, packed my bags and of course the universe "told me" that I was not meant to go. Suddenly, a week before I was supposed to leave, I had three job offers and one of them was my first movie. ~ Chris Pine

In starting to learn about film festivals and what were good ones - 'cause there are five billion of them - it was just a really good East Coast festival. And I thought this little movie was an East Coast film. ~ Andrew McCarthy

The frustrating part of it is that you're generally known for what you did last. I've had the privilege of doing some very cool independent films that, a lot of the time, the general public doesn't see unless you're at a film festival or you're into that kind of movie. ~ Hayden Panettiere

I have an Italian comedy at the Venice Film Festival. ~ Robert Englund

When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence. ~ Haile Gerima

When I graduated from Brown after majoring in women's studies, I made my first PBS documentary, 'Women of Substance.' My first feature documentary was called 'American Hollow,' which I did for HBO and was at the Sundance Film Festival. ~ Rory Kennedy

I think, often with Australian films, if an Australian film has been given the seal of approval by an offshore festival or an offshore release, then it does mean a lot to a local audience. ~ Joel Edgerton

Telluride has an incredible history and reputation, and I've long known of it as a unique entity that makes a place for writers - one more aspect of this exceptional film festival in the Colorado Alps. ~ Rachel Kushner

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible. ~ Vanessa Redgrave

The kind of sleep that I had during my own film [Certified Copy] screening in Cannes is different. It's not because of the specificity of the film. It was because of my relationship as an author to this film. Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them. Whereas this time, I didn't have that responsibility on my shoulders. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

Jewish people, we're repulsed by Hitler, but we're obsessed with him. If you ever want to rob a Jewish person's house, all you have to do is call them up and tell them there's a Hitler film festival down at the multiplex - watch them file out. ~ Andy Kindler

In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film. ~ Thom Powers

You can't host an Italian film festival without Marcello Mastroianni. It just doesn't feel right. ~ Gia Coppola

I think certain filmmakers going into Sundance or other big festivals should consider screening more for press and tastemakers before the festival. The traditional wisdom has always been the opposite: to not screen for anyone prior, let your film be seen by an audience, and generate the buzz from there. ~ Thom Powers

I got nominated for my second film as best young director in the Aikido Film Festival in Japan. ~ Donnie Yen

I had lived in Fukuoka during the mid 1990s, and I was a volunteer with the Fukuoka Asian Film Festival. ~ John Foster

Anyone for a Film Festival?: ~ Jerome Pitt

The very first thing I saw at this year's Telluride Film Festival was sheer bliss. "Lava," a musical romance from Pixar Animation, was one of the shorts that traditionally precede almost every festival screening; the director was James Ford Murphy. The story, spanning millions of years in 7 minutes, starts with a lonely Hawaiian volcano who, crooning to ukulele accompaniment, yearns for "someone to lava. ~ Anonymous

Well I was on the jury duty on the Deauville Film Festival, a few years ago. ~ Liam Neeson

I have a second bedroom I don't use. I'm going to start the Second Bedroom Film Festival. You're all invited. ~ Vincent Schiavelli

I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before. ~ Larry Clark

I like doing the promotional work. It's part of the film's process. Cannes was very wonderful to premiere. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

The whole being-in-a-room interview thing, at a junket or a film festival, is very inhuman. You meet the person, have five or 10 minutes to talk, and it's not like a conversation. ~ Paul Dano

The first rule of all filmmaking is that every scene should start at the last possible moment and end at the first possible moment. ~ Austin Film Festival

What's great about the Sundance Film Festival is the festival takes over that town as it's intended to do. But, it's very focused on a lot of other filmmakers and distributors so it almost feels like, while they're a lot of so-called civilians there, it's an opportunity that you have to see, to show your stuff to the other folks, your peers really, and to get that reaction. ~ Alex Gibney

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High. ~ Ethan Hawke

It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience. ~ Jesse Eisenberg

In December of 2001, after September 11th, my wife, Jane Rosenthal, and Robert DeNiro asked me if I would help them create the Tribeca Film Festival. The idea was to revitalize lower Manhattan. We would show films on piers, in high schools. It was all about the community. We wanted it to be accessible to everybody. ~ Craig Hatkoff

I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema. ~ Leslie Caron

Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan. ~ Olivia Wilde

Cannes is a circus, so you have to have fun with it. Everything suddenly becomes funny. And the promotion of a movie - that's where you really need to be a good actor. You need to make journalists believe that what you're saying is just for them and you've never said it before, even when you're talking about the same film over and over again. ~ Mathieu Amalric

Well I'm Superman, just not action. I'm kind of looking for something with a lot less action and more talking and listening. I also have a film that's premiering Vegas Film Festival, short film, directed by Joel Kelly, it's called Denial and it's a story, short film, 35 mm short film and it's about a man's struggle to choose between the woman of his dreams and his reality, so it's definitely different than Superman. So I'm really proud of that. ~ Brandon Routh

The really cool thing is all about being able to take your movie around and show it. It puts you in direct contact with people who are like-minded and interested in similar things. I think the film festival circuit has certainly helped to foster the community. ~ Joe Swanberg

When you go to a film festival as an audience member, it's so much fun. But when you bring your own film there, you carry so much stress and excitement. ~ Mora Stephens

I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about. ~ Lenny Abrahamson

I did a short film called 'Disco' and won an award for Best Supporting Actor at an indie film festival, and that was nice. Hopefully there's lots more to come. ~ Charlie Rowe

I don't get the romances. I did try - a film called 'Roseanna's Grave' in the 1990s. I liked it. But the audience didn't come. ~ Jean Reno