Cannes Festival: Allah Akbar and Juliette Binoche Is His Prophet

"Rest assured: while wokeism may be under attack from all sides and retreating across the globe, it knows that it will always find a ... refuge in the hearts of international film artists."

From The European Conservative

By Hélène de Lauzun, PhD

Left-wing artists simply cannot resist giving moral lessons.

At the opening ceremony of the 78th Cannes International Film Festival, French actress Juliette Binoche, who is this year’s president of the jury, engaged in a particularly embarrassing oratory exercise. For a moment, the red carpet became a repository for the dark thoughts of an actress who has turned herself into a prophetess of Hamas or a sibyl of global warming. Was this really necessary?

A bit of easy reactionary nostalgia: there was a time when the Cannes Festival made people dream and projected onto the screens great and beautiful films, not to say masterpieces. Think back. 1953, Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la peur. 1960, Fellini’s La Dolce vita. 1979, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. 1980, Kurosawa’s Kagemusha. 1993, Campion’s The Piano.

And then, as in all things, came decadence. The lesbian romances of La Vie d’Adèle replaced the waltzes of Il Gattopardo.

Today, having put to the firing squad every idea of beauty, every quest for truth, and every moral message designed to ennoble the human heart, filmmakers and actors alike are struggling to give meaning to their work and fill the emptiness of their existence. So they turn to ideology. Left-wing ideology, needless to say.

In this month of May 2025, Juliette Binoche shone particularly brightly in this discipline. On the 13th, the Oscar-winning French actress came to the podium in a strange disguise. The well-informed press informs us that her outfit was signed Dior and would have required 200 hours of work. Fair enough. The fact remains that she was veiled: a Dior veil, but a veil nonetheless. While the most optimistic saw her as a new kind of ‘madonna,’  given what she said, Binoche seemed more like a harem courtesan’s apprentice or the priestess of a new leftist sect.

All the pearls of political correctness were carefully strung together in the few too-long minutes she spoke. All the identifiable enemies of modern indignation were targeted by her dubious verbiage. Here are some of the best bits.

“War, misery, climate change, primitive misogyny: the demons of our barbarism leave us no respite. The hostages of October 7th and all the hostages, prisoners, and drowned people who endure terror every day feel abandoned.”

Then, a small invocation of the spirits of the Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassouna, killed by an Israeli bomb. On her personal social media, the photographer was delighted by the attack on October 7th, but Juliette won’t tell us about that.

After confession came good resolutions—a prerequisite for absolution. The actress enjoined us to “heal our ignorance, let go of our fears, change course, and restore humility.”

Caught up in the emotion of her speech, oozing with good feelings and intended to denounce, for the 6794th time or so in the world of cinema, the eternal villains—the patriarchy, the gun merchants, Israel, the polluters, the racists—Juliette’s tongue slipped, speaking of humidity instead of humility. There was certainly some humidity as she spoke—beads of sweat on the foreheads of listeners wondering when this moment of intense oratory would finally come to an end.

To be honest, bunched up and as if paralysed in her fashion-branded abaya, brave Juliette didn’t look very comfortable. But for a good cause, she was prepared to endure any suffering.

What a waste for an actress who remains undeniably a beautiful woman, with such a French grace, to be seen in such a garb—she that lent her features to the luminous Tereza, the faithful wife in Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being, or to the austere Pauline from Giono’s Le Hussard sur le toit.

The most tiresome thing about this exercise is that there is absolutely nothing new about it. It even has a despairing taste of déjà-vu. Juliette Binoche is not the first, nor will she be the last, to play the committed artist. Simone Signoret, who won an Oscar like her, made eyes at the Communist Party. The day before Binoche’s speech, Laurent Laffitte, master of ceremonies for the 78th edition, shone on stage, boldly calling out “climate, equity, feminism, LGBTQIA+, migrants, racism,” with, of course, the inevitable little charge against Trump and the United States, now the Voldemort of progressive commitment—the man and the country whose name must not be spoken.

Rest assured: while wokeism may be under attack from all sides and retreating across the globe, it knows that it will always find a warm and cosy refuge in the hearts of international film artists. All draped in Dior: what better destiny could there be for a lost cause?