Designed as a homage to the movie The Truman Show, the bright blue sky-filled design made by Hartland Villa is the face of this year’s 75th Cannes Film Festival. Here is the meaning behind the poster worth remembering.
Welcome to the Cannes Film Festival– a beautiful city on the southern coast of France. It’s also home to one of the biggest film festivals in the world. And today marks the 75th annual festival edition.
Formally known as the International Film Festival, the Festival de Cannes has “shared its name with the city it helped make famous since 2002.” Now every year, the exclusive event hosts screenings for filmmakers, actors, critics, and industry insiders to step inside an A-list space and witness the best in the business.
Top honours at the event are given out by a special jury of internationally recognised filmmakers and critics.
So as the festival’s instalment kicks off, running from May 17 to 28, the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday revealed the poster for its upcoming edition. At first glance, you may recognise the piece to be Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey.
The poster features “the scene in the Paramount film in which Carrey’s Truman is touching a sky of clouds while ascending a staircase,” says Deadline.
Now, even though this scene was captured in a movie, the meaning behind the image is what matters most. With interpretations flooding social media and talk of the town pointing at climate change, there is more to the figure walking upstairs than meets the eye.
According to the official Cannes Film Festival’s website, the team states that “the decisive scene urges viewers to experience the border between reality and its representation and ponder the power of fiction, between manipulation and catharsis”. Like in the movie, the character Truman escapes falsehood as he rises; the festival, with its famous ascending red carpet, offers viewers the truth of the artists when they enter the theatre.
They carry on to say that the stairs represent the red carpet that leads up the steps to the hope of being in the limelight. It is a poetic celebration of the insuperable quest for expression and freedom. And “it is an upward journey to contemplate the past and move ahead toward the promise of a revival,” states Festival de Cannes.
All art is based on pure interpretation, but the simplistic power poster is a symbol—a symbol of striving for more – to reach your highest potential, to soar. The 75th Cannes Film Festival brings together a host of stars who perform various roles to inspire us, to evoke in us something unique. It aims to reveal and focus attention on works of quality to contribute to the progress of the motion picture arts and encourage the film industry’s development throughout the world.
This year, according to Elle, a host of A-list celebrities will have their films presented at Cannes, including Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Strong, who all star in Armageddon Time and Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, who co-star in Three Thousands of Years of Longing.
So take a long hard look at the poster and think about the powerful message screaming at you.
The festival seeks to pay tribute to this iconic Truman scene by taking the extreme nature of the world in its stride.
Amid such serious issues, according to Opoyi, “the Cannes Film Festival seeks to remind people about 1939 and 1946, asserting that art and cinema are where society contemplates its renewal.”
Deep right?