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  "path": "/infamous-cannes-standing-ovations",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-13T16:32:02.000Z",
  "site": "https://nofilmschool.com",
  "tags": [
    "Cannes",
    "Cult films",
    "Film criticism",
    "Cannes film festival",
    "Standing ovations",
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    "Deadline",
    "www.youtube.com",
    "At least a dozen people left",
    "Variety",
    "17-minute standing ovation",
    "The Playlist",
    "$3 million",
    "whose visual philosophy we've written about at length",
    "a cult hit",
    "15 minutes",
    "The Hollywood Reporter",
    "The Telegraph's",
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    "Tomatoes",
    "$3.8 million",
    "IndieWire",
    "Francis Ford Coppola's",
    "seven minutes",
    "mixed",
    "Lionsgate eventually picked up distribution",
    "had a lot of feelings about what Coppola and Costner represented at that festival",
    "seven-minute standing ovation",
    "visible tears",
    "$38.7 million",
    "theatrical release date pulled",
    "Chapter 3",
    "E! News"
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  "textContent": "\n\n\n\nThe 2026 Cannes Film Festival is underway right now, which means the annual ritual is upon us: journalists stationed in the Grand Théâtre Lumière with stopwatches, clocking the exact minute-and-second duration of every standing ovation.\n\nAnd typically, at this fest, the ovations are long. Like, really long. Comically long. The record (according to Deadline) is 22 minutes for _Pan's Labyrinth_.\n\nAnd the numbers get a ton of press coverage, because a 12-minute standing ovation at Cannes sounds like it means something.\n\nIt is not a verdict, nor even an indication of the film's actual narrative or technical quality. A long ovation doesn't mean the film will be \"successful\" or even \"well-liked\" by traditional standards with a broad audience. It could just be the vibe in the room, and honestly, I love that for the attending filmmakers.\n\nThe Cannes standing ovation is one of the film industry's most persistent myths. Here are five of the most infamous recent cases where the room was spectacularly, expensively, sometimes hilariously wrong.\n\n## _Crimes of the Future_\n\n- YouTube www.youtube.com\n\nIf David Cronenberg is anything, it's divisive, and _Crimes of the Future_ followed suit when it bowed at Cannes in 2022. The director actually predicted that he would have walkouts before his body horror film screened.\n\nAt least a dozen people left the building mid-screening. The rest gave it a seven-minute standing ovation.\n\nTo his credit, Cronenberg was unbothered. He told Variety he found walkouts preferable to indifference.\n\n\"It doesn’t make me sad. I mean, the worst thing is if your movie is boring, and I’ve been to some screenings in Cannes where nobody walked out, but nobody cared about the movie either. And that would be very depressing.\"\n\nHe's not wrong. But the split response points to something about how Cannes ovations function, which is that they measure the enthusiasm of the people __who stayed. Not quite the same thing as the room's verdict on the film.\n\nFor what it's worth, I like this film and always know what I'm getting into with Cronenberg.\n\n## _The Neon Demon_\n\n- YouTube www.youtube.com\n\nNicolas Winding Refn's hypnotic fashion-world horror film received a 17-minute standing ovation at Cannes 2016. It also received walkouts and boos during the screening, which gives you a sense of how divided the room actually was.\n\nThe day after his presser, Refn said the boos were a \"punk rock\" point of pride.\n\n\"Look at the reactions. You can’t deny it, it’s search and destroy … ” he said (via The Playlist). \"Whatever you got, I’ll tear it down and build it again. Don’t compromise on life or anything; that’s where you feel life. That’s what’s important to get across to those teenagers out there.\"\n\nOn paper, 17 minutes of sustained applause for a film that ultimately grossed around $3 million worldwide looks like a pretty clear disconnect. And yet, it's hard to call _The Neon Demon_ a failure in the conventional sense.\n\nRefn (whose visual philosophy we've written about at length) has always made expensive films for a specific audience. That audience showed up in the Lumière.\n\nTen years later, it's safe to call this one a cult hit among horror fans.\n\n## _The Paperboy_\n\n- YouTube www.youtube.com\n\nLee Daniels' swampy Southern noir—yeah, the one where Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron—collected somewhere around 15 minutes of applause at its Cannes premiere.\n\nZac Efron was reportedly brought to tears. Even Kidman, a veteran of many Cannes responses, called it the longest standing ovation she'd ever received at the festival (via The Hollywood Reporter).\n\nThe Telegraph's critic was also present and described what followed the film in quite different terms, characterizing it as a quarter-hour of audible jeering and animal noises rather than pure appreciation.\n\n\"Watching a film bomb in real time at a European film festival is an experience like nothing else on Earth,\" Robbie Collin wrote in 2013. \"Catcalls echo freely around the auditorium, while abandoned cinema seats snap back upright with a jolting _ka-lunk_. Communal boos swell and crash like waves. It comes at you from all directions; cinema in five-dimensional sneer-o-vision and scoff-o-rama.\"\n\nWhich version of events is accurate probably depends on where you were sitting or what your mood was that day.\n\n_The Paperboy_ earned a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed about $3.8 million worldwide against a $12.5 million budget.\n\nAn IndieWire review at the time floated the question of whether it was \"so bad, it's good.\" The film has since developed a cult following.\n\n## _Megalopolis_\n\n- YouTube www.youtube.com\n\nIn 2024, Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating passion project arrived at Cannes to a standing ovation before the film had even started rolling. (The audience was applauding the arrival of Coppola and his cast.) Which, okay, we get. You're applauding a dream and a legacy.\n\nThen they watched the movie. Some boos followed. Also, some confusion.\n\nIn case you weren't able to see this film in a theater, during the screening, a live actor is supposed to walk onstage to perform dialogue opposite the film onscreen, with the house lights up. It startled audience members at Cannes and baffled me when I was able to see it at a press screening.\n\nThe ovation that came after at Cannes, clocking at around seven minutes, was described by some as a mixed bag of approval and dislike.\n\nLionsgate eventually picked up distribution, and _Megalopolis_ found its way to theaters, where it confirmed most of what the divided Cannes reaction had suggested.\n\nAt the time, we had a lot of feelings about what Coppola and Costner represented at that festival. Jason Hellerman wrote about the admirable, genuinely inspiring spectacle of two filmmakers betting on themselves, and I don't think that inspiration was wrong, even if the film wasn't quite the triumph the pre-screening applause implied.\n\n## _Horizon: An American Saga_\n\n- YouTube www.youtube.com\n\nA recent reigning champion of Cannes ovation mythology is Kevin Costner's _Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1_ , which received a seven-minute standing ovation at its 2024 premiere and moved Costner to visible tears. His post-screening speech was emotional and earnest.\n\nThe film didn't fare so well upon wide release. Critics gave it a 51% on Rotten Tomatoes.\n\nIt made $38.7 million worldwide against a combined two-chapter budget of around $100 million, much of which was Costner's own money. He reportedly mortgaged his Santa Barbara home to help fund it.\n\n_Chapter 2_ , which was filmed back-to-back with _Chapter 1_ , had its theatrical release date pulled after _Chapter 1_ 's opening weekend performance and, as of this writing, has still not received a wide theatrical release. Filming on _Chapter 3_ began but was halted.\n\nCostner has been publicly unbothered and defiant, insisting the film will find its audience.\n\n\"I've faced life with people being dismissive of me,\" Costner told E! News. \"But they can't be dismissive of _Horizon_ , because now it's out of their hands. And they might point to the finish line—well, this is what it did at the box office—but I know that this movie is going to play for the next 50 years.\"\n\nMaybe he's right.\n\nWhat's your favorite Cannes ovation?",
  "title": "The Most Infamous Cannes Standing Ovations"
}