Hollywood star Demi Moore and Korean auteur Park Chan-wook kicked off the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday with a series of careful but unequivocal statements defending the role of politics in cinema.

Asked whether she had concerns about political statements during the festival potentially distracting from the films themselves, Moore said she strongly hoped not. “I think part of art is about expression, so if we start censoring ourselves, then we shut down the very core of our creativity, which is, I think, where we can discover truth and answers,” she said.

Park, who is chairing this year’s Cannes jury, then offered an extended defense of political filmmaking in response to a similar question, which quickly became the dominant theme of Cannes’ first press conference.

“I don’t think politics and art should be divided,” the South Korean auteur said. “I think it’s a strange concept to think they’re in conflict with each other. Just because a work of art has a political statement, it should not be considered an enemy of art. At the same time, just because a film is not making a political statement, that film should not be ignored.”

But Park also noted that the most “brilliant political statement” can easily devolve into “propaganda” if it’s “not expressed artfully enough.”

Park later added: “I am prepared to watch films with the pure eyes of an audience member, without any prejudice or stereotype, just excitement to watch films that will surprise me.”

The remarks came three months after this year’s politically embattled 76th Berlin International Film Festival, where jury president Wim Wenders told reporters during the opening press conference that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics.” The comments drew immediate online backlash and helped set off one of the most acrimonious editions in the German festival’s recent history. The fallout included an open letter signed by more than 80 industry figures — among them Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton — criticizing the Berlinale for what they called its “silence” over the war in Gaza and Germany’s culture ministry convening a meeting on the festival’s future direction.

This year’s nine-member Cannes jury is characteristically stacked with filmworld talent. Park is joined by Moore; Oscar winner Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, Hamnet); Swedish veteran Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value); French actor Isaach De Bankolé (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai); Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga (Loving); Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel (Adam’s Sake); Chilean director Diego Céspedes (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo); and Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty, the longtime collaborator of Ken Loach.

Later in the press conference, Moore was asked about the rise of artificial intelligence in filmmaking and took a more measured stance. “AI is here, and so to fight it is to, in a sense, fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So to find ways in which we can work with it, I think, is a more valuable path,” she said. “Are we doing enough to protect ourselves? I don’t know. My inclination would be to say probably not.” Even so, Moore said the technology has its limits. “There are beautiful aspects of being able to utilize it, but the truth is, there really isn’t anything to fear, because what it can never replace is what true art comes from, which is not the physical. It comes from the soul. It comes from the spirit of each and every one of us sitting here.”

Laverty was by far the most outspoken among the Cannes jurors on the festival’s opening day, offering a sharper critique of the industry’s embrace of AI. The Scottish screenwriter argued that the industry and society at large should be deeply skeptical of the companies and tech billionaires who own and control the world’s most popular AI services, “because they decide on the algorithms that affect our lives in the deepest way.”

“And what seems to me to be absolutely incredible,” he went on, “is that they assume the rest of the world will follow and swallow it, no matter what the consequences are. Look at the whole crisis now in data [centers] — affecting sustainability, water and populations. I think people are beginning to realize that we should not let these tech bros — billionaires who are, mostly, right-wing libertarians — dictate how we live our lives.”

He went on: “What’s the effect on workers — beyond artists, ordinary workers — in our society and for our children? So we have to examine who owns it, and we must demand, I think, that it’s made transparent and more democratic. It’s far too important to leave it to these guys.”

Laverty also shared his view on the value of cultural events like Cannes in a world increasingly riven by war and conflict. “When you see so much systematic violence — genocide in Gaza and all these terrible disputes — the idea of coming to a festival, which is a celebration, you know, of diversity, imagination, tenderness, nuance, beauty and inspiration — it knocks me out, to be honest,” he said, adding: “I can’t wait to begin the adventure with these wonderful characters beside me.”

Park’s jury will hand out the Palme d’Or to one of the 22 features in this year’s competition at the festival’s closing ceremony on Saturday, May 23. The 79th edition of Cannes opens Tuesday evening with the world premiere of Pierre Salvadori’s Roaring Twenties rom-com La Vénus électrique.

Craig Mazin says he knows what you’re thinking: “The Chernobyl and The Last of Us guy wrote a broad comedy mystery about talking farm animals? OK.” Well, Mazin’s comedy roots run deep. Also, we contain multitudes.

The Sheep Detectives, Mazin’s adaptation of Leonie Swann’s Three Bags Full, has been a passion project of his for the better part of two decades. And now that results are finally out in theaters — the feature includes an impressive cast on-camera (Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Hong Chau) and voicing sheep (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brett Goldstein, Regina Hall) — he seems a little nostalgic. “I feel like this is the one where I finally figured it out,” he says.

During a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Mazin spoke about taking inspiration from Babe, script doctoring, his love of competence porn and why he believes the upcoming third season of The Last of Us will have its viewers reexamining their previous takes on the show.  

You wrote the original The Sheep Detectives script 10 years ago. How much does a project change in a decade? And are there points where you think, “Why am I still working on this?”

This one took, weirdly, even longer. I first got the book from our producer, Lindsay Doran, 19 years ago. It took her nine to unwind the rights. Then set it up at a studio and I wrote a script about 10 years ago. That script is basically the movie. I’ve done a little bit of revising, not much. But the studio was like, “This isn’t just a purely goofy movie. There’s like there’s a lot more going on here. And we’re not really sure we want to be in that business.”

Almost a decade later, someone did.

Courtenay Valenti, who is now running [Amazon] MGM, always loved it, always thought there was something valuable to the idea of a family movie that seemed like a silly talking animal movie and turns out to be much more moving. She bought it from the other studio and it went from just sort of sitting there to releasing it with the most amazing cast I think I’ll ever be associated with.

The Craig Mazin who wrote this was still very much known for writing comedy. With Chernobyl and The Last of Us, you’ve really pivoted to the death and murder guy.

Why must I go to extremes? Actually, this is the thing that came in between. I was starting to segue from one genre to another. It is funny now to talk to people where they’re like, “I don’t understand how the Chernobyl and The Last of Us guy could do this.” You know, the very first thing I ever did 30 years ago was a children’s movie [Rocket Man] at Disney. I think I’ve written in every genre. And, obviously, there’s a lot of things I write that my name is not on. But this movie is probably the nearest and dearest to my heart, because I feel like this is the one where I finally figured it out.

You have a reputation for being a really strong script doctor. So there are many, many films you’ve worked on that don’t have your name on them. Can you demystify that a bit for me, because a big part of your career has been done in the dark?

You know that there have been projects over time where a studio has gone through 30 different writers and no one, especially the studios, wants to see “written by” and then 30 names. It looks bad. It’s not good for us either. There’s a reason that we limit the credits. Most of the time when I’m doing these kinds of jobs, it’s to either help something get a green light… or it has gotten a green light and then a movie star or producer says, “Let’s bring in somebody to just help with the first act or fix this character or do a thing. I don’t do it with any expectation of credit and I quite typically don’t ask for it. They pay you pretty well and you get to work with some great people. They’re like one-night stands, creatively.

From what I’ve read and heard, you wanted to cast as wide of a net as possible with this movie. How do you do that?

Our goal was always Babe, which is what I would call the last realist talking animal movie that was special — that wasn’t just, you know, talking animals. And that’s what we aimed to do. And I remember the Babe was so surprising. I saw a Babe in the theaters and I was in my 20s.

We all did. It’s kind of wild how big Babe was.

We all saw a Babe, because we heard it was special. When they talk about, “Who’s this movie for? What’s the audience for this film?” I think the audience for Babe is humans. The audience that we were aiming for is humans. And it is interesting that, yes, death-and-despair Craig wrote this. But do you remember who wrote Babe? George Miller. Mad Max George Miller. Sometimes, you gotta go to that guy for a talking animal movie.

The book you’ve adapted this from, Three Bags Full, has such a fantastic title. I understand why that was not chosen for the film, but can you talk to me about the naming discussion?

It’s always Three Bags Full to me. Every script I wrote, the title page said Three Bags Full. When it was time to actually put the movie out there in the world, these titles are very frequently changed by studios. Marketing, specifically, has a lot to weigh in on that. And I don’t mind. On one hand, it’s a very silly title. On the other hand, it tells you exactly what the movie’s about — which is helpful!

What are some tropes you see in movies and TV that you’d love a moratorium on?

I’d love a moratorium on the whole idea of tropes. (Laughs.) Here’s a trope: vampires. There’s a point, like, “My God, how many things about vampires have there been?” Then Sinners came along, and they’re vampires, but it’s not about vampires. I make a show about zombies. It’s not about zombies. As long as there’s something honest underneath it all, I’m open to anything. Like, I love John Wick. What John Wick does beautifully is something I call competence porn. We just love watching people who are awesome at what they do. And they do it in ways that other people have not.

What are some other good examples of competence porn?

The entire Jason Bourne film series is confidence porn. Maybe the best screenplay I’ve ever seen on screen is Unforgiven. The entire movie, people just keep talking about how Clint Eastwood’s character, William Munny, was the most incredible murderer the West has ever seen. He’s just an old broken-down guy who doesn’t seem very good at anything, gets his ass kicked, gets a fever, almost dies. Then, at the very end, he rides into town and does it. That is its own kind of release.

You famously told David Benioff and Dan Weiss, upon seeing the original unaired pilot for Game of Thrones, that they had a “massive problem.” And everyone is aware that the version we got is an almost completely different episode of television. When in your career has someone said something like that to you?

I say it to myself constantly. I have this thing where I want to run toward bad news. I think it’s because I come out of comedy. And comedy is brutal because the audience will tell you with their silence, you have a massive problem. You become like firemen running into burning buildings rather than sort of celebrating what you have. In drama, you can theoretically sit in an audience and say, “I’ve made this beautiful work of art and it is my expression. And if these people don’t get it, it’s their fault, it’s not mine.” In comedy, no one gives a damn. You have to embrace the crucible of feedback.

I’m paraphrasing, but you’ve said something to the effect that critics never really get comedies. Why do you think there is a greater divide?

Well, to start with, critics don’t give comedy its due. And it is the hardest thing to do. Best picture at the Academy Awards should only be comedies as far as I’m concerned. It’s just understood that best picture of the year goes to something very serious. That’s that. It’s so much harder to write Scary Movie 3 than it is to write Chernobyl. And I know this from personal experience. (Laughs.) I also think people get into film criticism because of their love of comedy.

You cater to two different audiences with The Last of Us: people with this deep relationship with the video game and others, like me, who watched the first episode and assumed “Oh, I’m signing up to watch a five-season series with my friends, Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal.” That’s not what they’re getting. So does your awareness of those two camps impact the writing and execution of a season like the one that’s coming up and focuses on Kaitlyn Dever?

Well, it wasn’t like season two wasn’t a departure. We knew what we were doing there, and what I love about that story is that you are denied your heroes and you’re denied your villains. What you are forced to reconcile with is that the people that you care about and root for are not good all the time. It is a question of perspective and narrative. It’s a very powerful thing to be given a story that gives you a hero and that makes your side good. That is fundamental to most religions — and it is fundamental to most politics now. It creates a tribalism. It’s “us versus them,” and it happens very, very quickly. What I loved about the story of the game, which is in line with what I am pursuing on the show, is that it is not that simple.

The answer to conflict, tribalism and to the alienation of one group from another, you can say empathy. But going about showing empathy is hard, especially when you’re talking about empathizing with somebody who has hurt you personally, taken something from you, caused you grief. There’s a reasonable argument to be made that you should not be extending a hand to somebody who has hurt you or hurt somebody you love. And easier said than done. So this is about exploring that. What I know that we have is Kaitlyn Dever. She is the kind of actor that you find yourself aligning with and rooting for almost instantly.

Speaking of tribalism, a very funny trivia fact about you is that your freshman year roommate in college was Ted Cruz. I only bring this up because, when those catastrophic storms were happening in Texas and he left for Cancun, one of the headlines was “Ted Cruz Invited His College Roommate to Mexico Trip He Blamed on His Daughters.” My instant reaction was, “Maybe I don’t know Craig Mazin as well as I thought I did…”

It wasn’t me! Different guy. And I know who that was. I’m so glad you said “freshman year roommate,” as in… I got assigned. I didn’t pick this guy. I just got a little form in the mail that said, “Your roommate’s going to be Rafael Edward Cruz. I was very excited until I met him. And then I wasn’t. Hey, there’s a guy that unites everyone. Everyone hates him — Republicans, Democrats. Everyone agrees he stinks.

I was very fortunate with my freshman year assignment, but I do believe having to live with randos ultimately makes you a higher-functioning adult.

Because I’m old, I like the phrase “character building.” And it does build character. You can survive these things. I survived Ted Cruz for a year. If I could do that, I can do anything.

Nine days into the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard and a band of New Wave insurgents brought the Croisette to a halt, shuttering the world’s most glamorous movie showcase in solidarity with student protests sweeping France. Nearly six decades on, the question hanging over this year’s edition is whether geopolitics — from Gaza to Iran — could again hijack the narrative, or whether Cannes will once more prove it can absorb the shock without losing control.

This year’s Berlin Film Festival provides a cautionary tale. Fierce debate over the war in Gaza ignited a political firestorm that nearly cost festival director Tricia Tuttle her job. Jury president Wim Wenders’ insistence that “we have to stay out of politics” was swiftly overtaken by filmmakers who refused to do any such thing. Onstage statements on Gaza — Syrian-Palestinian director Abdallah Al-Khatib, winner of the Berlinale Perspectives section for his drama Chronicles of a Siege, called out the German government as being “partners in the genocide in Gaza by Israel” — triggered an institutional backlash. It all played out in public, generating far more headlines than any of the films in competition.

Producer Mike Downey, the former head of the European Film Academy, sees the similar political fault lines running through Cannes this year. “I think something like [what happened in Berlin] could happen in Cannes, if Cannes doesn’t take control of the narrative,” he says. “Neutrality is sort of impossible, as Berlin and Wim found out.”

There is no shortage of combustible material. The war in Gaza remains a rallying point for artists and activists (Palestinian director Rakan Mayasi will be in Cannes to screen his latest, Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep in Un Certain Regard), while escalating tensions around Iran — and festival lineup heavy with Iranian voices, including Asghar Farhadi, Pegah Ahangarani, Karim Lakzadeh, and Mahsa Karampour — are certain to add another geopolitical layer. With two prominent Russian directors in the official selection, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur is in Competition, Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam will open Directors’ Fortnight, Russia’s war on Ukraine could also prove a flashpoint.

At Cannes last year, politics were there from the start. The opening ceremony featured a tribute to slain Gaza photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, the subject of Sepideh Farsi’s documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hands and Walk, from jury president Juliette Binoche, while Robert De Niro used his honorary Palme d’Or moment to attack Donald Trump. Offstage, more than 300 filmmakers, including Binoche, Javier Bardem, Joaquin Phoenix, and Pedro Pascal, signed an open letter condemning the industry’s “silence” on Gaza. The temperature was high but, unlike in Berlin, the festival never lost its footing. The political debate never overtook the discussion about the films.

Tuesday’s jury opening press conference of Cannes 2026 featured jurors’ comments on how politics and films belong together, including from Demi Moore and president Park Chan-wook, while Paul Laverty also shared outspoken thoughts.

Salma Abu Ayyash of the Palestinian Film Institute draws a sharp distinction between Berlin, where she says it felt Palestinian directors and their supporters “felt threatened” — some in the German media called for Al-Khatib to be arrested and charged with “hate speech” — and Cannes, where “we feel very safe and very appreciated. It’s not an institutional thing, but there’s a network of people in Cannes that make us feel heard. It makes a lot of difference for us when we go to a festival where we feel the police are chasing us, versus a festival where doors are open, and speech is protected.”

Cannes, says Downey, remains “one of the last bastions for cultural integrity” in an increasingly compromised festival landscape. “It’s always a great place for voices to be heard, whether they’re environmental, or LGBTQ, whether it’s about what’s happening in Iran or Gaza, or its about the electricians are going on strike, Cannes has always been a place for troublemakers. It’s probably why I like it.”

But, in contrast to Berlin, Cannes, post-68, has been adept at keeping the troublemakers from taking over. The festival has spent years refining a playbook that allows dissent but contains it. A strict “no protest” rule governs the red carpet — security shuts down political demonstrations as quickly as they do selfie shots — and the festival’s tightly choreographed premieres and ceremonies leave little room for disruption. The emphasis, always, is on the show — the spectacle of cinema as global industry and cultural event. Political debates are largely found within the films themselves, or in demonstrations and discussions held a safe distance from the Palais.

“I’ve just been struck by the fact that the last two years I was in Cannes, there weren’t any scandals in the way that Berlin is finding it impossible to avoid at the moment,” says Philip Oltermann, European Culture Editor for the Guardian. “Cannes is still show business [and] I get the impression that people who go there end up sort of following the rules. They might make very challenging films but you don’t have the situation where, at the awards ceremony, the artists clash with the organizers.”

Politics, from Gaza to Iran, from Russia to the White House, will be everyone on the Croisette this year. The question is whether it remains embedded in the films — and the conversations around them — or breaks through and takes center stage, sparking the kind of institutional crisis that engulfed Berlin. If history is any guide, Cannes will let the noise in, but keep the focus where it wants it: on the films, and on the show.