A Personal Look Back at the Cannes Film Festival as It Celebrates 75 Years of Championing World Cinema

variety.com:

Cannes Film Festival almost 35 years ago, I was still green and naïve enough to ask long-time Cannes attendees why the famed French fest held such a powerful place in the pecking order of international film gatherings.

The late Richard Corliss, Time magazine’s peerless and beloved film critic, answered warmly and succinctly, with his own more worldly query: “Would you rather be in Germany in the winter or the South of France in the spring?”Corliss had a point, but in the decades since I’ve tucked my own couple of dozen Cannes fests under my belt, I’ve compiled my own list of reasons why Cannes remains the one film festival that people who’ve never been to a film festival have heard about and wish they could go to, and know that if a film has scored there, it must be worth their time.

From the late ’70s to the present Cannes, only two people, first Gilles Jacob and then Thierry Frémaux, have directed the festival.Both have ruled with passion, both fiercely competitive and determined that the primacy of Cannes will not fade while they’re standing atop the Palais steps greeting the world’s greatest filmmakers.Let’s start with the way that Cannes remains a major player in the awards season game.

Despite the fact that the film awards season begins in earnest later and later every year — making Cannes’ May dates seemingly less attractive — here’s a quick scorecard of Oscar hits that premiered in Cannes:The high point of the Frémaux era is Bong Joon Ho’s historic 2020 ride to the Oscar best picture award, marking the first time in history that a foreign-language film took the top Oscar prize.