On a warm afternoon in late April, La Croisette hummed with life. Families pushed strollers along the boardwalk, children trailed behind with dripping ice cream cones, and tourists posed for selfies silhouetted against the Mediterranean. At Plage Macé, a centrally-located public beach, people tanned, played volleyball and went for a dip.
For the next two weeks, Plage Macé has been transformed into an outdoor theater, outfitted with a massive movie screen — nearly 80 feet by 20 feet — and an elaborate sound system, with 600 deck chairs available on a first-come-first-served basis.
This is Cinéma de la Plage, the Cannes Film Festival’s free program of nightly film screenings. At a film festival notorious for its exclusivity, this is one event where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are — or how they are dressed.
“Cinéma de la Plage is evidence that the Cannes Film Festival never forgets it has to remain a cultural and popular event,” Thierry Frémaux, the festival’s artistic director, explained in an email.
Camilla Amelotti works at a children’s attraction, Les P’tits Bateaux (The Li’l Boats), directly in front of Plage Macé. In between selling souvenir magnets and handing out remote controls for miniature yachts, she described Cinéma de la Plage as an accessible alternative to the festival’s indoor screenings, especially for film-loving locals.
“It’s really nice,” said Amelotti, 28. “You just have to have time to go and the patience to wait to get in.” She added that for many people who work in the tourism industry, the film festival is the busiest time of year.
Ilona el-Hasnaoui, 26, has a front-row seat to Cinéma de la Plage from behind the counter of Kiosque 9 Bis, a gleaming white food stand with a turquoise awning situated directly in front of Plage Macé. Hasnaoui is the store’s manager and often stays until closing time — 1 a.m. during the festival — so she steals glances at the screen while serving sandwiches and crepes.
She said that business picked up during the nightly screenings. “People can see the movie from here,” she said, indicating the space directly in front of her kiosk. “They get their food here and they sit behind the railing,” she said, noting that no food or beverages were allowed on the beach during the films and that deck chairs were a precious commodity. “There are many, many people. If you want a seat, you need to wait.”
Cinéma de la Plage is officially part of Cannes Classics, the festival section devoted to film history that was started in the early 2000s. Frémaux, who has worked at Cannes since 1999 and became festival director in 2007, said his desire to inaugurate a free, outdoor program stemmed from personal experience.
“When I was just a festivalgoer, I wasn’t always able to get into the movie theaters and I thought it would be a good idea if the festival offered something completely different to the public, especially in the evenings,” he said. “When I took over, I suggested we hold a daily event on the beach.”
Given the festival’s unique location on the French Riviera, it may seem hard to believe that movies on the beach were never a major part of the event during its first 50 years. (Frémaux pointed to some earlier one-off events, including an apocryphal midnight screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal,” a four-hour-and-fifteen-minute film version of Richard Wagner’s opera, which ended with breakfast on the beach at dawn.)
While classics, often presented in fresh restorations, dominated the early Cinéma de la Plage programs, these days the lineup also includes cult and contemporary offerings, as well as sneak previews of films about to hit French cinemas and even the occasional world premiere.
Because this is Cannes and a high percentage of the world’s major filmmakers congregate here during festival time, it’s not uncommon for directors to pop over to present their films if they’re programmed in Cinéma de la Plage.
Frémaux reminisced about Quentin Tarantino showing up with Uma Thurman to introduce a 35-millimeter print of “Pulp Fiction” in 2014, and Jackie Chan arriving by boat for a screening of his 1982 kung fu classic “Project A” for its 40th anniversary in 2012.
“And there was Agnès Varda, who in the rain convinced the audience to stay by talking to them for several minutes before the film,” he said of the French director’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” which was screened during the memorably wet 2018 edition of the festival. Beyond films, Cinéma de la Plage has also hosted concerts, dance parties and even karaoke.
This year’s lineup features films by John Woo, Nanni Moretti and Terrence Malick; a new restoration of King Vidor’s 1946 western “Duel in the Sun” undertaken by Martin Scorsese; and a new documentary about Brigitte Bardot.
“Cinéma de la Plage is a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed,” said Peter Bradshaw, the chief film critic for The Guardian, who has attended the Cannes Film Festival since 1999.
“And I think it’s a very good thing for Cannes to do,” he added, “because Cannes is sometimes criticized for being too closed off and elitist.”
And while there is undeniable excitement whenever a world premiere takes place at Plage Macé (as with “F9,” the ninth film in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, in 2021) Cinéma de la Plage provides especially inspiring conditions for seeing a classic foreign or art house film.
“On occasion you can get to see ‘8½’ at some repertory movie theater, but it’s a rare thing to see it on the biggest possible screen,” Bradshaw said, referring to the 1963 Federico Fellini film, which screened here on the beach in 2014. (He fondly recalled seeing “Jaws” — the ultimate beach movie — on Plage Macé in 2013).
While accredited journalists and film industry members — including those who find themselves locked out of other festival screenings — turn up at Cinéma de la Plage, the program is particularly valuable for locals who have comparatively few opportunities to see other films at the festival. (No tickets are sold to any of the festival screenings, which require hard-to-come-by invitations for the public. A limited number of these are made available to Cannes residents).
“It’s a chance for the festival to reach out to the town, to reach out to the Côte d’Azur generally,” Bradshaw said.
Beyond all that, however, Cinéma de la Plage also provides a striking visual. The image of its majestic screen, silhouetted against the sea and sky, has become an indelible part of the festival’s image.
“It looks so great as a spectacle in itself, on the beach, especially as night falls,” Bradshaw said. “Even if you’re not going to a movie there and just walking up and down the Croisette, which is a signature experience of being at Cannes.”
Plage Macé is only three hundred yards from the red carpet. And yet, with the sound of the waves and the smell of the sea, you might as well be light-years away from the glamour, adrenaline and stress that are otherwise inescapable at the event. Leaning back in your deck chair, this can feel like the best seat at the festival — in the sand, under the stars.
“Of course, Cannes is the biggest festival in the world, of course there’s a market, there’s media pressure, the competition, the awards,” Frémaux said.
“But for everyone,” he added, “going to the beach is a way of not forgetting that, in essence, cinema is all about a silver screen, a crowd and a film.”
