The feature documentary Cannes Uncut takes a look behind the scenes of the Cannes Film Festival, the gloriously glamorous and glitzy film event that has come to represent the best in cinema as well as the business of showbusiness. The film has its Cannes market premiere on Wednesday 17 May 2023, having been announced to much media and industry interest at the 74^th festival in July 2021.

Cannes Uncut covers eight decades of the festival and market, and following the market premiere it will have its official public world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on 8 June.  It then sets off on a global journey, taking the story of Cannes to audiences all around the world, because as Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux says: “The story of Cannes is the story of cinema.”

Produced by long-time Cannes veterans Colin Burrows, Mark Adams, Chris Pickard and Richard Blanshard, the film celebrates the films and the filmmakers as well as detailing the glamour, red carpets, craziness, deals, parties, movies, and personalities that saw the business of show business implant itself at the Cannes Film Festival. 

In the decades following its launch in 1946 this initially modest French event established itself as the world’s pre-eminent film festival, and grew to define sophisticated film glamour as the world came to love the images and stories of the stars and starlets as they romped the sunny Cannes beaches by day, looked resplendent in sparkling jewellery and the finest of fashions on the red carpet and partied hard and late into the night.

The Cannes Film Festival is famous as an event brimming with stories and characters as outlandish and dramatic as the films that have premiered there, and Cannes Uncut celebrates the great films and the wild parties; the spectacular promotional stunts and the iconic talents; as well as the glorious successes and the infamous failures.

Featuring extensive new interviews with long-time Cannes’ General Delegate Thierry Frémaux; actress and Cannes regular Tilda Swinton; filmmakers including Ken Loach, Lynne Ramsay, Oliver Stone, Karim Aïnouz, Mike Leigh and Mark Cousins; industry figures such as producers Jeremy Thomas, Christine Vachon and Shannon McIntosh; Participant Media CEO David Linde; former head of J&M Films Mike Ryan; and an array of journalists, publicists and industry insiders. Also featured are Wim Wenders, Lea Seydoux, Juliette Binoche, Quentin Tarantino, Sharon Stone and many others associated with the festival over its eight decades.

• Created and scripted by Mark Adams and Chris Pickard, Cannes Uncut is directed by Roger Penny and Richard Blanshard. The editor is Roger Penny with music by Emmy nominee Nicholas Singer.
• Cannes Uncut is a Special Treats production for Once Upon a Time and is being sold by Autlook Filmsales (in Canes @ Riviera L4)