Just a week away from its opening, Cannes Festival has definitely decided that films produced by Netflix (Okja by Bong Joon-ho and The Meyerowitz Stories by Noah Baumbach) will be in the official selection. Their participation had been questioned after the protest of the main French distribution companies, who were not happy with the presence of the two films that won’t be screened in cinemas, since they are already available on the SVOD platform.
It seems that the Festival asked Netflix to allow for their distribution in cinemas but with no success, since French law is extremely strict with SVOD distribution rights: any film screened in a cinema can’t be broadcast on an online platform for three years. Netflix is trying to reach a deal with the distribution company The Joker and with CNC (the National Film Board) to try and obtain the same deal they reached in the US for some important films, namely a week programming in cinemas conciding with the release of the two films on its platform. But CNC has not given a final answer yet, and it is suspected that they were pulled by the same distribution companies who opposed Netflix participation to the festival.
Even though the Festival has decided to let Netflix take part in the competition, a declaration was issued announcing a crackdown on the already strict rules for entering the selection: starting from 2018, films screened at Cannes will implicitly accept their distribution in France.
