The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the official poster for its 77th edition.
Cannes likes to evoke cinematic history in its official merch, and this year’s poster is no exception. It features a scene from Rhapsody in August, Japanese classic from the late Akira Kurosawa, which premiered out of competition in Cannes in 1991.
In the film, Kurosawa’s penultimate feature as a director, a grandmother, a victim of the Nagasaki bombing, passes on her faith in love and integrity as a bulwark against war and violence to her grandchildren and her American nephew.
The poster chimes nicely with what is becoming a bit of a Japanese theme at this year’s Cannes festival. Earlier this week, Cannes announced it would present an honorary Palme d’Or this year to Japanese anime house Studio Ghibli (The Boy and the Heron, Spirited Away), the first time the French festival has given its highest award to a company instead of an individual artist.
Over the years, Cannes’ posters have been classy (last year’s shot was of a young Catherine Deneuve Deneuve in 1968 standing on a beach near Saint Tropez), charming (the 2013 edition featured a smooching Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward from 1963), and cheeky (the 2021 poster featured director Spike Lee from the glasses up, gazing up pensively at the Cannes palm trees, like his Mars Blackmon character from She’s Gotta Have It.)
Occasionally, they have been controversial. The 2017 poster stirred up online outrage amid allegations that the image of a young, twirling Claudia Cardinale had been altered to make the Italian star look thinner.
The 2024 poster will gaze down on this year’s jury, headed by Barbie director Greta Gerwig, as the jury members judge the films in the running for the Palme d’Or.
The 77th Cannes Festival kicks off May 14 with Quentin Dupieux‘s The Second Act starring Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon. It runs through May 24.
Check out the 2024 poster below.
2024 Cannes Film Festival Poster
© Shochiku Co., Ltd. / Kurosawa Prod. – Graphic design: © Hartland Villa
