Cannes 2025 Recap Part One: Hello Brave New Multipolar Film Industry

It was an odd Cannes film festival this year. The films were good, but the business was muted and the instability created by US President Donald Trump rattled around the market, much like the mistral winds that led to the unfortunate palm tree incident on the Croisette.

But then we should expect Cannes, as the only truly international event on the film festival circuit, to reflect back at us the creative, political and economic movements that are sweeping the world. We are moving from a unipolar world, one dominated by America’s soft power and economy, to a multipolar world with several competing spheres of influence. In the film industry, as in any other industry, we can expect this to be an exciting but unsettling time.

For Asia’s film industry, this year’s Cannes was also a sad time, first with news that a Japanese producer had been badly injured by the falling palm tree, then to hear that we’d lost a friend, Indonesian producer John Badalu, who passed away in Bali as the festival wa…