Major Disruption Hits Cannes Festival—Organizers Scramble to Respond

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Major Disruption Hits Cannes Festival—Organizers Scramble to Respond

An unexpected incident brought the Cannes Film Festival to a screeching halt on Saturday, May 24, according to the

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via French authorities.

The legendary festival, which is scheduled to hold its closing and awards ceremony Saturday evening, fell victim to a power outage in the Cannes area that was caused by “acts of sabotage,” including damage to a transmission tower and an incident of arson at a substation, according to the French police. The festival was temporarily halted

At the time, the festival issued a statement that noted that there were few disruptions caused by the outage, and their decision to quickly switch to festival generators allowed “all scheduled events and screenings, including the closing ceremony, to proceed as planned and under normal conditions.” That said, the statement also noted that screenings at one theater had been “temporarily suspended,” most likely the Agnes Varda theater where the New York Times notes that a screening of the Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal film The History of Sound suffered a blackout but resumed 20 minutes later.

Because the festival is now back up and running with their own power supply, the closing ceremony is set to go ahead as scheduled.

Local French politician Laurent Hottiaux, who represents the Alps-Maritime area of which Cannes is part, claimed the outage was caused by “major damage to network installations” near the seaside city, including both the damage to the tower and the alleged arson incident. “All resources are being mobilized to identify, track down, arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of these acts,” Hottiaux said in a statement.

Life was disrupted in Cannes during the incident no matter if you were a local or a tourist. Traffic lights were down and local police had to direct traffic, shops and boutiques were closed, and, according to the New York Times, local firefighters were called to respond to many elevator breakdowns.

French authorities told the New York Times that local prosecutors had opened an investigation into the suspected sabotage, however they did not share if they had any reason to believe the festival was specifically being targeted with this incident.

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first appeared on Parade on May 24, 2025

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