The Cannes Film Festival has said its closing ceremony on Saturday evening, as well as its scheduled events throughout the day, will go ahead as planned despite a massive power outage which has cut electricity in Cannes and across the South of France region of Alpes-Maritimes.
“The Palais des Festivals has switched to an independent power supply, allowing all scheduled events and screenings, including the Closing Ceremony, to proceed as planned and under normal conditions,” it said in a statement.
However, screenings at the Cineum have been temporarily suspended and will resume as soon as power is restored.”
Deadline staff on the ground reported that electricity was out across Cannes, with lights off in shops and restaurants, which could only take cash payments. Traffic lights were also down causing snarl-ups on the roads. The internet has also been impacted with popular apps like WhatsApp offline.
As well as the Palais des Festivals, a number of the big hotels along the Croisette still also had power thanks to generators, although it was not clear for how long they could continue to provide electricity.
The press conference for Kelly Reichardt’s Mastermind, with the director and cast members Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal, went ahead as planned at 10.15 am local time.
“The lights are out across Cannes but at the Palais the lights are on. It’s business as usual, and the morning press conference with Kelly Reichardt went on without a hitch,” reported Deadline Anthony D’Alessandro.
“It’s town wide. Prada is closed. A lot of the shops are dark. You can only use cash in the Cannes gift shops. Everything’s dark.”
France Info radio reported that 160,000 households in the area were impacted by the outage which was caused by the fall of a power line.
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