Cannes opens with honour for ‘Lord of the Rings’ director

The Cannes Film Festival, renowned for celebrating the world’s finest films each year, opened on Tuesday night (IST) with a noticeably subdued atmosphere. This year’s red carpet featured fewer A-list Hollywood celebrities, largely due to studios opting not to present their stars at the event.

Paul Laverty, one of the jurors at the ceremony also denounced Hollywood for the way it treated its stars, including Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo for ‘opposing the killing of women and children in Gaza’.

‘Lord of the Rings’ director Peter Jackson was awarded an honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement on the opening night. Model Heidi Klum, legendary actor Joan Collins, and Indian film star
Alia Bhatt, turned heads, walking on the red carpet. This year's jury, including Oscar-nominated actors Demi Moore and Stellan Skarsgard, also walked the red carpet into the plush 2,300-seat Grand Lumiere Theatre ahead of the screening of
opening film ‘The Electric Kiss,’ a French-language romantic comedy, according to PTI.

Peter, 64, recalled how he brought a clip from his first
‘Rings’ film to Cannes 25 years ago in a bid to win over an audience sceptical of his decision to shoot the entire trilogy simultaneously. "It was a huge gamble," he recalled. The bet paid off, with the critically and commercially successful series winning 17 Oscars and making nearly $3 billion
in revenue.

Wood recalled that the day he heard that he got the lead role of Frodo would divide his life into a before and after."I'm far from the only person whose life has been changed by Peter Jackson," he added. Wood did not discuss politics. Last year's recipient, Hollywood icon Robert De Niro, used his speech to call for protests against US President Donald Trump. The only political nod came from Jane Fonda, the longtime US actor and activist, who appeared on stage with Gong Li, one of China's best actors, to declare the festival officially open."Jane comes from the West, I come from the East.

Tonight we stand together here. This is the magic of Cannes," said Gong. Fonda used her stage time to celebrate cinema as an act of resistance."I believe in the power of voices, voices on the screen, voices off the screen, and definitely voices on the street, especially now," she said, to applause. "Let's celebrate audacity, freedom, and the fierce act of creation."