With black smoke.. Women’s issues impose themselves on the Cannes Festival

The red carpet of the 75th session of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 was distinguished by the strong presence of women’s movements defending women’s issues. , especially in France.

On Sunday, 12 women’s rights activists and advocates boycotted the premiere of Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s film “The Holy Punishment”, which is participating in the official competition of the festival, and entered carrying candles emitting black smoke, and banners bearing the names of 129 murder victims in France.

Two days earlier, a French activist stormed the red carpet, wearing blood-stained pants, to denounce what she said were “the rapes committed by the Russians in Ukraine.”

One of the activities said that she decided to wear black because she was in mourning, noting that “they do not want to climb the stairs of the red carpet in bright clothes topped with a smile, as the stars do, because what women are exposed to from hunting has become unbearable,” as she put it.

These activists chose the film “The Holy Mankind” to send this message, because the film carries a true story that Iranian director Ali Abbasi transferred to the Cannes Film Festival, where he returned to the story of the thug who killed several women in 2001.

This comes while the presence of women in the Festival de Cannes still raises many questions, and the 75th session has shown great interest in them, and the management has signed the 50/50 charter, which relies on the recruitment process and the division of tasks within the festival team between men and women.

The 2021 session witnessed a distinguished presence of female directors from around the world, as 4 of them participated in the official competition out of 24 films in the official competition, which is an exceptional number in the history of the festival.

Alarming numbers of violence against women

According to official figures issued by the French Ministry of the Interior, in 2020, France witnessed the killing of 102 women by violence, at the hands of the partner or former partner, while 23 men were killed by their partner or former partner, and the figures indicated that 14 children died at the hands of one of his parents in context of spousal violence.

In this regard, Canadian critic Kiva Redon emphasized that the Cannes Festival is a real occasion for activists to send messages of this kind.

Redon told Sky News Arabia: “It is not the first time we have witnessed such movements. We have lived through similar things in the past, and the red carpet is also a station for beauty and displays the latest fashion, as it is also a platform for thorny issues.”

Official figures indicate that 219,000 women in France suffer physical or sexual violence every year, perpetrated by a former or current partner.