The 2025 Cannes Film Festival is here. And on its first day we got a Quentin Tarantino mic drop, the first casualty of the festival’s new no-nudity-or-big-trains rule for the red carpet and even “Godzilla” made a surprise appearance.
Here’s what went down on the first day of the fest.
Quentin Tarantino Closes Out the Opening Ceremony in Typical Fashion
Quentin Tarantino, seemingly doing everything he can to not make his tenth and final film, attended the festival’s opening ceremony at the Grand Lumiére Theatre. His only job – besides walking the red carpet with wife Daniella – was to introduce the festival as officially starting. (It will run for the next 12 days.) “It’s my honor to declare the 78th festival open!” Tarantino shouted into the microphone before dropping it. True to form, he pulled it off with aplomb and the kind of borderline-cartoonish energy that characterizes his very best work.
While Tarantino hasn’t set his next project, meant to be his swan song as a director, there is a chance he could return to Cannes next year with the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” spinoff film, directed by David Fincher and once again starring Brad Pitt, which is meant to shoot in Los Angeles this summer. Hey, it could happen.
The New Red Carpet Rule Ruins Halle Berry’s Fun
Ahead of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, two new rules were issued for those attending the red carpet – no nudity (“For decency reasons, nudity is prohibited on the Red Carpet, as well as in any other area of the Festival,” reads the official festival charter) or “voluminous outfits,” specifically dresses with a large train “that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating.” At the opening day press conference, Halle Berry said that, sadly, “I had an amazing dress by Gupta that I can’t wear tonight, because it’s too big of a train.” But that’s okay. The actress and Cannes jury member added: “Of course I’m going to follow the rules. But I had to make a pivot.” Even if she didn’t, Cannes has deployed “welcoming teams” who will, according to the festival, “be obligated to prohibit Red Carpet access to anyone not respecting these rules.”
No nudity and nothing dramatic at the Cannes Film Festival? They can try.
“Godzilla” Makes a Surprise Appearance
This year’s Cannes jury president is Juliette Binoche, the legendary, Oscar-winning French actress who has appeared in genuine classics like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy, Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” and Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy.” But as part of the Cannes opening ceremony, they ran a career reel that featured a surprise guest – Godzilla. If you’ll recall, Binoche co-starred in Gareth Edwards’ 2014 “Godzilla,” as the wife of Bryan Cranston, a nuclear regulations consultant who is killed in a monster attack during the movie’s opening sequence. Many noted the appearance of “Godzilla” among the arty, contemplative dramas that make up much of Binoche’s resume (and were reflected in the clip selections).
But there is a precedent with the King of the Monsters and the Croisette – in 1998 Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s “Godzilla” served as the closing film at the festival. This is, incredibly, true. Roger Ebert compared it to “attending a satanic ritual in Peter’s Basilica. It’s a rebuke to the faith that the building represents.” Ebert continued: “Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. ‘Godzilla’ is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival’s closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.”
Glad to see Big G’s return was met with a warmer response this time.
Robert De Niro Slams Trump (Again)
Robert De Niro received an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes’ opening ceremony (handed to him by costar and fellow Martin Scorsese muse Leonardo DiCaprio) and used the opportunity to slam United States President Donald Trump. “Now, he has announced a 100% tariff on films produced outside the U.S. Let that sink in for a minute. You can’t put a price on creativity, but apparently you can put a tariff on it,” De Niro said on stage. “Of course, this is unacceptable. All these attacks are unacceptable, and this isn’t just an American problem. It’s a global one. And like a film, we can’t just all sit back and watch.”
De Niro, a frequent and often hilarious critic of the president, wasn’t the only person at Cannes to address the big orange elephant in the room. Binoche, during the opening press conference, remarked, “I understand that Trump is trying to protect. For us, we have a strong community of filmmaking on our continent in Europe … I don’t know what to say — I can see that he’s fighting to save America and to save his ass.” The actress noted that she’s not “acceptable to answer” questions about Trump’s tariffs but we would note that she is an international actress who has worked in America and mostly abroad and whose films have been celebrated in the United States and thus has a vested interest (and keen insight) into what is happening now.
A Novelistic Opening Film
The festival opened with Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling,” which charts the lives of four women, across 100 years on a German farm. Beyond being Cannes’ big premiere it is also in competition for the Palme d’Or. Steve Pond’s review of the film for TheWrap called it “free-flowing and leaden, novelistic and allusive, dour and flowery.” “Elusive and allusive to intriguing ends, ‘Sound of Falling’ also falters into a programmatic kind of fatalism that seems more redolent of the Serious Film an up-and-coming German auteur is supposed to make than the indefinable object she actually did,” Pond’s review concluded.
Peter Bradshaw’s four-star review in UK publication The Guardian noted that the film is “something like a ghost story or even a folk-horror and there is a clammy unease in every shot as the camera drifts up and away from scenes like a ghost; the soundtrack throbs and groans with ambient disquiet.” And Alison Willmore, at New York Magazine/Vulture, was totally taken with the film, noting that, “We may have already seen the best film at Cannes this year.”
