TikTok Partners With Cannes Film Festival

In order to enhance its global influence, the organizing committee of the Cannes Film Festival has chosen to cooperate with TikTok, providing users of the popular app with exclusive backstage, red-carpet interviews with filmmakers from all over the world, according to Variety on Tuesday. The Cannes Film Festival, however, previously had banned selfies on the red carpet.

Rich Waterworth, the general manager of TikTok in Europe, said he regarded the Cannes Film Festival as an “iconic moment that has forever changed the landscape of global cinema.” Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux added that he was also curious and eager for TikTok to “share the magic of the festival with a wider, much more global and just as much [of a] cinephile audience than ever before.”

In addition, TikTok will launch #TikTokShortFilm, a global in-app competition of vertical short films that are between 30 seconds and 3 minutes in length. Users of the app all over the world will have the opportunity to participate in the competition. The jury of the first #TikTokShortFilm Competition will be chaired by well-known directors, and the candidates have not been announced yet. Three related awards will be presented during the Cannes Film Festival.

The Cannes Film Festival, founded in 1946, is considered one of the three major international film festivals in Europe, alongside the Berlin International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. The highest award given at Cannes is the “Palme d’Or.”

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The Cannes Film Festival is held in May every year for about 12 days, during which the film competition and a market exhibition are held. The 75th Cannes Film Festival will be held from May 17 to May 28, 2022. To celebrate the 75th anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival cooperated with two new media sponsors: France Télévisions, a domestic public broadcaster, and Brut, a digital technology company.