This year’s jury press conference, the first official event of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, was dominated by a discussion around U.S. President Donald Trump and his recent, vague threat of imposing tariffs on films made outside the U.S. When jury president Juliette Binoche was asked to comment, she demurred on specifics, noting that a true evaluation of such a policy would require “an analysis of the industry of cinema in the world.” But she did weigh in on Trump’s possible motivations: “We can see that he’s fighting. He’s trying in many different ways to save America and save his ass.”
Jeremy Strong, who received an Oscar nomination for playing Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn in last year’s Cannes competition title The Apprentice, added, “At a time when truth is under assault, where truth is becoming an endangered thing…the role of film is incredibly critical.” He called his presence at this year’s festival a “counterbalance” to what he presented via Cohn on the Croisette a year ago.
There was also some breaking news for Binoche to address as, just this morning, a French court found former Cannes best-actor winner and national institution Gérard Depardieu guilty of sexually assaulting two women in 2021. He had a complex relationship with Binoche. She once called him an “important figure” in her life in the beginning of her career, offering advice and encouragement, before he disparaged her in the press after she won a Cannes prize in 2010. “He punched a fist in my face. And it injured me,” she told The Guardian in 2022.
“For me, what is sacred is when something happens, when you create, when you act, when you are on stage,” Binoche said today in response to Depardieu being found guilty. “We have no grasp of the sacred, and now he is no longer sacred. That means you need to think hard about the power wielded by certain people who take that power. The power may lie elsewhere.”