Cannes Film Festival 2025: red carpet in a world in turmoil

The Cannes Film Festival, a must-attend event for AFP since it started in 1946, is more than ever a bridge between glamour and hot news. Far from being just a cultural and celebrity event, the festival also reflects the times, with the top news stories making their mark every year. The 78th edition this year was haunted by the war in Gaza, a fixture of many of the film competitions but also featuring in statements made by stars like jury president Juliette Binoche. The 2025 edition also saw Robert De Niro take aim at Donald Trump and the screening of a documentary about Julian Assange. It concluded with a Palme d'Or defying Iranian power, secretly filmed by Jafar Panahi. 

How does AFP organise itself to cover, for 15 days, the world's largest film festival, its hundreds of screenings, and its stars? And what are the key takeaways from this particular edition?  

AFP covers the festival every year. In 2025, the on-site team consisted of ten journalists, a photo unit (four photographers, four editors, one technician/photographer responsible for a robot capturing images on the red carpet and the halls hosting the opening and closing ceremony), seven VJs, and one journalist per week managing social networks. A diverse team that requires seamless coordination, notes veteran photographer Valéry Hache, covering his 19th Cannes Festival. "You have to stick together to avoid missing anything—the fear of photographers—because everything is meticulously choreographed by festival organisers!" 

And surprises are not uncommon, from the official red-carpet announcement of actress Lyna Khoudri and footballer Karim Benzema becoming an item to Ukrainian soldiers climbing the stairs supported by U2's Bono and actor Sean Penn.

There were several topics to cover: highly anticipated films screened as world premieres, the biggest stars, debates linked to international news and #MeToo, artificial intelligence, the audiovisual market, and unexpected controversies... Thus, in this international and multilingual team (French, English, Spanish, German, Arabic, Russian), all profiles and ages were represented.

"You have to be able to cover anything from the French New Wave of the 1970s to contemporary Iranian cinema or influencers. In the TikTok era, Cannes' red carpet is more than ever an essential passage for celebrities seeking fame," explains François Becker, an AFP journalist who has covered cinema for five years after previously covering the German economy, the Paris suburbs, and Marseille. To date, he has covered seven Cannes festivals. 

The AFP team is one of the few with offices inside the Palais des Festivals itself. A hive of activity working day and night, strategically located with direct access to screening rooms, press conference rooms, and backstage areas. There are also dressing rooms as the festival requires everyone, including journalists, to wear evening attire on the red carpet and at gala screenings. 

At Cannes, every minute counts, warns François Becker. And the work starts long before the festival begins. "You need to coordinate as best as possible, in text, photo, horizontal video, and vertical video, to cover as much as possible while you are there. It begins weeks in advance with screenings of certain films in Paris and arranging the first meetings." Once the event kicks off, flexibility becomes vital to handle schedule changes, last-minute interview offers, and other unforeseen events. "To be honest, you hardly see daylight! Days start at 7am with online reservations for film screenings (about 100 for each film). You then have to juggle these sessions, which start before 9am and end after midnight, with numerous interviews offered to AFP at the Palais des Festivals in luxury hotels or on beaches, choosing angles, and writing the stories," he adds. 

Photographers' days revolve around photocalls starting at 10:30 and the stair climbs—up to four sessions in the afternoon and evening. In between, "we juggle meetings with actors and directors with scoping out 'features,' which are visual representations of the festival, like fans on ladders or extravagant outfits on the Croisette," says Valéry Hache.

“Getting interviews with big names in French or international cinema is not easy; the reporting network that covers cinema year-round helps a lot,” notes Margarita Govorine. François Becker confirms that "competition is tough. With 4,000 accredited journalists, the Cannes Festival is one of the largest media events, alongside the Olympics and the World Cup,” he explains. "Not to mention that stars and producers nowadays often prefer to bypass journalists and focus on influencers and social media platforms, where they are less likely to face challenging interviews. It’s up to us to convince them to play along with the interview game!" 

For photographers too, the pressure is constant: capturing the moment, missing nothing. One of their advantages lies in the strategic positioning of a robot. Controlled by Antonin Thuillier, it is deployed on the red carpet and in the room hosting the opening and closing ceremonies. It gets photos with unusual angles, which are then widely shared.  

Certain moments remain etched in the memory. 

For Valéry Hache, three photos stand out. First, the visible emotion of Robert De Niro and Denzel Washington when each received an honorary Palme d'Or for their entire film career. And Bono lying on the floor at the end of the photocall for a documentary dedicated to him. François Becker recalls his conversation with Robert De Niro on a terrace at the Palais des Festivals. 

A rare meeting with a cinema legend who chose to talk about politics. “De Niro brushed aside most of the questions about his career to sound an alarm about the state of America and deliver an anti-Trump critique. A unique moment, while, a few floors below, Tom Cruise was causing hysteria on the red carpet.

In Cannes, echoes of the outside world are never far away, confirms Raphaëlle Peltier, deputy head of the technology and culture department, and coordinator of the text team at Cannes, after years in sports and as a correspondent in Qatar. "We are constantly on the lookout for politically charged phrases or images that warrant a story, or even an alert. Whether it’s Juliette Binoche’s opening ceremony tribute to a photojournalist killed in Gaza, Ukrainian soldiers on the red carpet, or the American-Chilean actor Pedro Pascal calling to "fight" Trump’s immigration policies in a press conference.”