The Movie With The Longest Standing Ovation At The Cannes Film Festival
The 2024 Cannes Film Festival is going on right now, and a handful of highly anticipated upcoming releases — including George Miller's prequel "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" and Demi Moore's unsettling new body horror flick "The Substance" — have received lengthy standing ovations from their audiences. So which movie earned the longest-lasting standing ovation in the history of the French film festival? That would be Guillermo del Toro's 2006 masterpiece "Pan's Labyrinth," which had audiences standing and applauding for a whopping 22 minutes when it screened in May of that year.
Cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike are familiar with del Toro's unbelievable body of work — Including his Oscar-winning films "The Shape of Water," which won best picture in 2018, and his take on "Pinocchio," which won best animated feature film in 2023 — but if you ask a handful of his fans which of his movies is their favorite, several will probably bring up "Pan's Labyrinth." The visually stunning, often horrifying film centers around a young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) who, while living in the traumatic aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and struggling with her mother's increasingly serious illness, escapes into a mythical world and is told she's the reincarnation of a magical princess. So what other films made waves at Cannes thanks to their standing ovations?
Documentaries and feature films both earned lengthy standing ovations at Cannes
As of this writing, "Pan's Labyrinth" still holds the top record for standing ovations specifically at Cannes — not any other film festivals — but a pretty diverse array of other movies that premiered along the Croisette garnered a ton of applause as well. Just behind "Pan's Labyrinth" is Michael Moore's 2004 Iraq War documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which earned 20 minutes of uninterrupted applause (and Moore's previous effort, 2002's "Bowling for Columbine," had audiences clapping for 13 straight minutes). Jeff Nichols' 2012 drama "Mud," which stars Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon, garnered 18 minutes, and the creepy 2016 Nicolas Winding Refn project "The Neon Demon" trails that record with 17 minutes of applause during its own festival.
2012's steamy Zac Efron-Nicole Kidman effort "The Paperboy," 2014's French reproductive rights drama "Two Days, One Night," and the 2018 Lebanese film "Capernaum" all had audiences on their feet and cheering for 15 minutes, and other award-season darlings like 2022's biopic "Elvis," 2009's "Inglourious Basterds," and 2018's "BlacKkKlansman" earned 12 minutes, 11 minutes, and 10 minutes, respectively. Considering that the 2024 Cannes Film Festival is ongoing, have any films managed to even come close to the outpouring of love given to "Pan's Labyrinth" or the films that trail it in the record books?
Which movies earned long standing ovations at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival?
According to a report in Vulture that rounds up all of the applause times reported by various outlets, a handful of films got audienced out of their seats and onto their feet during the 2024 festival — and as of press time, "The Substance" came out on top with 11 minutes of applause. Still, the movie — which stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley as the older and younger version of the same woman, who will do absolutely anything to cling to eternal youth — is also proving divisive (as a different article in the outlet reveals) thanks to its over-the-top gore and intense moments of body horror.
Apparently, audiences and members of the press attending the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 went wild for some of the stranger and more ambitious projects, like the Spanish-language musical from director Jacques Audiard, titled "Emilia Peréz," which stars Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña and got 10 minutes of applause. Other hotly anticipated 2024 movies like "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," Andrea Arnold's new film "Bird," and Francis Ford Coppola's bonkers epic "Megalopolis" got seven, eight, and nine minutes of applause each. So what does this tell us when all said and done? Cannes attendees have a lot of stamina when it comes to applause ... and they haven't seen anything they loved quite as much as "Pan's Labyrinth" since that film screened nearly 20 years ago.