Cannes: the CGT promises to "make its cinema" at the festival despite the ban on demonstrations

The Cannes Film Festival, its red carpet leading to prestigious screenings, its long dresses and tuxedos, its glasses of champagne, but no banner or slogan. The prefecture of Alpes-Maritimes took Friday a decree prohibiting any demonstration in Cannes, around the Croisette, for the duration of the 76th edition of the festival, from Tuesday to Sunday, May 28.

This concerns the surroundings of the Palais des Festivals, the Croisette and the streets adjacent to it. "This order is identical to that of previous years," the prefecture told AFP. And if the decision was taken because of the precautions to be taken "on the occasion of this event of exceptional scale of an international character", which attracts up to 120,000 people and cameras from all over the world, it is not related to the current social context.

As part of its opposition to the pension reform, the CGT is determined to circumvent the restrictions, and has already planned various actions. Friday, May 19, in the early afternoon, it intends to gather the employees of the hotel sector for a fixed gathering, on the forecourt of the Carlton, a private esplanade that does not enter the perimeter targeted by the prefecture.

Events already planned outside the prefectural perimeter

Two days later, Sunday, May 21, late morning, a declared demonstration, at the call of an inter-union gathering CGT, Solidaires, FSU and Unsa, will be held on the boulevard Carnot, still outside the forbidden perimeter. The organizers want to say their refusal of the pension reform but also that of unemployment insurance and its consequences on the intermittents of the show and the seasonal workers, said a local official of the CGT, without excluding "surprise actions" during the festival.

To raise festival-goers' awareness of the place of women in the world of work and in cinema, the SPIAC-CGT union and the collectives 50/50 and Femmes à la caméra plan to screen at the Palais des Festivals the documentary "Amor, Mujeres y Flores", a 1989 film about Colombian workers who are victims of pesticides in the flower industry.

On April 21, as part of their announcement of "100 days of action and anger", in the face of the 100 days of action promised by the head of state Emmanuel Macron "in the service of the France", the unions of the CGT Energy had evoked "energy disturbances" aimed in particular at the Cannes Film Festival. "In May, do as you please! The Cannes Film Festival, the Monaco Grand Prix, the Roland-Garros tournament, the Avignon Film Festival could find themselves in the dark! We will not give up! " they explained.