Cannes

"Cannes Film Festival is segregating us press by badge colors and we need to change it" !!!

Rubing Liang, New York-based freelance writer covering Cannes Film Festival for the 4th year. 

Like many of my fellow critics and reporters, I had to fight my way into the crowded theaters or waited hours in front of the Palais just to get a single seat. This is due to the fact that Cannes Film Festival runs a humiliating caste system that segregates us into different color badge groups.

This has to change. Therefore, I and my partner Zishun Ning made a short film, The Color of Cannes. We interviewed critics and reporters of all color badge groups and found that all of us suffer from the segregation. With the film, we started a petition to demand Cannes abolish the caste system (you could view the film in the petition): https://www.change.org/p/abolish-the-caste-system-at-cannes-film-festival

Cannes makes some improvements this year on additional screening time and services, but this only comes after people of the press community repeatedly voice their anger about the change of screening schedule without counseling with them and demand abolishment of the caste system. Further, if Cannes have the capacity to add additional screening time, then why don't they just get rid of the caste system that exists ostensibly due to "no longer enough room?"

As festivalgoers all year round, we know how other film festivals have ways to make screenings easy without imposing a caste system on us. These we believe can also be applied to Cannes, including but not limited to:

• advanced notices for packed screenings, so that people won't see hundreds of reporters lining outside the Palais with zero chance to go in
• arrange additional screenings in under-utilized rooms
• fill empty reserved seats prior to the screening start time in Lumière Theater
• a mobile app with screening information for critics and reporters to pre-schedule the day, reserve seats and get notices for additional seats.

All these can be done to improve our working conditions in the festival, without segregating us into different color groups and forcing us to wait for hours for a screening. It is an embarrassment for a world-renowned film festival to run a caste system. We and more and more critics, reporters, filmmakers, cinephiles and supporters of equal rights are urging Cannes to right the wrong. 

Would you like to stand with us? Please sign and help spread the petition: https://www.change.org/p/abolish-the-caste-system-at-cannes-film-festival