Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong, and Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche were immediately pressed on all things Trump at the festival’s first press conference on Tuesday.
They were joined by Alba Rohrwacher, auteur directors Hong Sangsoo, Payal Kapadia, and Carlos Reygadas, French Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, and Congolese documentarist Dieudo Hamadi.
Of course, the conversation swiftly moved to the looming shadow of President Donald Trump whose spate of tariffs has upended the global economy. He has, in recent days, turned his attention to Hollywood: a 100 percent movie tariff on international films putting the fear of god into every producer flocking to the Croisette.
“I’m not sure I’m capable to answer that because it requires an analysis of the industry and cinema in the world,” Binoche said when asked how the proposed tariffs threaten the international film industry. “I understand President Trump is trying to protect… he was trying to protect his country, but for us, we have a very strong community of filming on our continent, in Europe. So I don’t know what to say, really, about that. I think we can see that he’s fighting, and he’s trying in many different ways save America and save his ass.”
“The Apprentice really underlines the stakes,” said Succession star Strong, who also scored an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of ferocious lawyer-slash-Trump mentor Roy Cohn in Ali Abbasi’s film that debuted in Cannes last year. “Roy Cohn, I see essentially as the progenitor of fake news and alternative facts, and we’re living in the aftermath of what I think he created.”
He continued: “I think that this time where truth is under assault, where truth is becoming an increasingly endangered thing, that the role of stories, of cinema, of art and here, specifically at this temple of film, the role of film is increasingly critical because it can combat those forces in the entropy of truth, and can communicate truths, individual truths, human truths, societal truths, and affirm and celebrate our shared humanity. So I would say that what I’m here doing this year is, in a way, a counterbalance to what Roy Cohn was doing last year.”
When Binoche was asked about the open letter penned by over 350 filmmakers and industry members condemning Cannes’ passivity on the war in Gaza, Binoche baffled the press with her response on why she was not a signatory: “You will maybe understand it a little later.”