Yes, we Cannes 2024!

14th of May 2024 , Cannes, France – The start has been given to one of the biggest cinema festivals in the world, Cannes Film Festival.

The 77th edition has started and will be rolling until 25th of May in Cannes. Actors, stars, celebrities and people from the movie industry will be gathering in the most popular destinations of the French Riviera , the traditional host of the festival, for screenings and latest film premieres, actors awards ceremonies of the latest movie releases and not only. And last but not least for the magnificent red carpet moments, events and numerous glamorous party with most watched attendees and guests.

The debut of this year’s Cannes Festival started on Tuesday with emotion and recognition of a moment that will surely mark the entire event of 2024. The legendary actress Meryl Street has been awarded with an honorary Palme d’Or for her entire career handed to her on stage by French actress Juliette Binoche.

Before Meryl Streep could accept her honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night, she was greeted by a thunderous two-minute standing ovation. The 74-year-old Oscar winner was so overcome with emotion that she first pretended to walk off the stage, but eventually began to dance to the applause.

French star Juliette Binoche, herself emotional, presented the award to Streep, saying: “When I see you on the screen, I don’t see you … Where does it come from? Were you born like this? I don’t know, but there’s a believer in you; a believer that allows me to believe.”

Binoche called Streep “an international treasure” as she listed off many of Streep’s most beloved roles, from “Sophie’s Choice” to “Julie and Julia.” Binoche later added, “You changed the way we look at cinema.”

n her speech, Streep thanked Cannes for welcoming her back after 35 years, with her last appearance being for 1989’s “Evil Angels.” She said that watching the ceremony’s retrospective clips of her career was “like looking out the window of a bullet train, watching my youth fly into my middle age, right onto where I am standing on this stage tonight. So many faces and so many places that I remember.”

Streep said that the last time she was at Cannes, “I was already a mother of three, I was about to turn 40 and I thought that my career was over.”

“That was not an unrealistic expectation for actresses at that time. And the only reason that I’m here tonight and that it continued is because of the very gifted artists with whom I’ve worked, including Madame La President,” she said, gesturing to jury president Greta Gerwig, who directed her in 2019’s “Little Women.” “And, incidentally, that was my daughter she was beating up in ‘Frances Ha’ in the first clip. I’ll speak to you about that later.”

Streep ended her speech by saying that she is “just so grateful that you haven’t gotten sick of my face and you haven’t gotten off the train.”

“My mother, who is usually right about everything, said to me: ‘Meryl, my darling, you’ll see. It all goes so fast. So fast.’ And it has, and it does,” Streep said. “Except for my speech, which is too long.”

Indeed, Tuesday night’s ceremony seemed somewhat Streep-themed, with even the music corresponding to one of her fan-favorite roles in “Mamma Mia.” ABBA’s title track to the movie musical played outside on the red carpet, while Streep’s rendition of “The Winner Takes It All” soundtracked her credits reel and “Dancing Queen” played as she accepted the Palme d’Or.

Streep joins several other industry heavyweights who will be appearing at this year’s edition, including “Star Wars” stalwart George Lucas, who will receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the closing ceremony; Francis Ford Coppola, who is presenting his new film “Megalopolis” in competition; and Paul Schrader, whose “Oh, Canada” is also competing for this year’s Palme d’Or.

The iconic and prolific actor has received a record-setting 21 Oscar nominations over her nearly five-decade-long career and has won three, for her performances in “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1980), “Sophie’s Choice” (1983) and “The Iron Lady” (2012).

“I am immeasurably honored to receive the news of this prestigious award,” Streep said in a statement when her honorary Palme d’Or was announced exclusively by Variety. “To win a prize at Cannes, for the international community of artists, has always represented the highest achievement in the art of filmmaking. To stand in the shadow of those who have previously been honored is humbling and thrilling in equal part. I so look forward to coming to France to thank everyone in person this May.”

• via Variety Magazine

About Meryl Streep via Festival de Cannes: Meryl Streep is the guest of honour at the opening ceremony of the 77th Festival de Cannes which will take place on the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière on Tuesday, May 14. A celebrated figure in American cinema, the American actress will kick-off the upcoming edition which will draw to a close on Saturday, May 25th with the awards’ list given by the President of the Jury, Greta Gerwig.

After Jeanne Moreau, Marco Bellocchio, Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jane Fonda, Agnès Varda, Forest Whitaker or Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep will receive the Festival’s Honorary Palme d’or. 35 years after winning the Best Actress award for Evil Angels, her only appearance in Cannes to date, Meryl Streep will be making her long-awaited return to the Croisette.

“I am immeasurably honored to receive the news of this prestigious award. To win a prize at Cannes, for the international community of artists, has always represented the highest achievement in the art of filmmaking. To stand in the shadow of those who have previously been honored is humbling and thrilling in equal part. I so look forward to coming to France to thank everyone in person this May!” Meryl Streep stated.

“We all have something in us of Meryl Streep!” Iris Knobloch and Thierry Frémaux said. “We all have something in us of Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, Out of Africa, The Bridges of Madison County, The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! Because she has spanned almost 50 years of cinema and embodied countless masterpieces, Meryl Streep is part of our collective imagination, our shared love of cinema.”

After her drama studies and initial success on New York City stages, Meryl Streep’s career took off on the big screen in 1978 with The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro. In Michael Cimino’s film, Meryl Streep wrote all her lines to give her character nuance and depth. This marked both her first Oscar nomination — now reaching a record 21 — and her demand to play strong, ambivalent women. For example, when she starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer, she refused to let the film revolve around the male lead and rewrote a crucial monologue. She went on to win her first Oscar, and quickly gained recognition from the audiences and the industry alike.

Meryl Streep uses her intuition and hard work to reinvent herself with every appearance. Even on the scale of a film: in Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, she played two roles. In Alan J. Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice, her acting addresses a mother’s inconceivable moral dilemma. For this character, she studied German and Polish to take on the accent — impeccable according to Andrzej Wajda — and won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Sydney Pollack’s unforgettable historical, romantic epic Out of Africa (1985) marked a new turning point, in which she and Robert Redford formed one of cinema’s most legendary couples. Far from confining herself to the register of passionate love, Meryl Streep also ventured into darker characters. In Fred Schepisi’s 1988 Evil Angels (A Cry In The Dark), she played a mother accused of infanticide. Her performance earned her the Best Actress Award at the 1989 Festival de Cannes.

In the 1990s, she tried her hand at gritty comedy: she challenged female stereotypes in Mike Nichols’ Postcards from the Edgeand Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her. In The Bridges of Madison County, she captured the screen alongside Clint Eastwood in a love story as impossible as it is timeless, that went down in cinema history.

Throughout her career, Meryl Streep has never shied away from publicly denouncing the precarious position of women in the film industry. Aware of the issues surrounding the representation of women in Hollywood movies, and keen to embody all their facets in all their complexity and fragility, Meryl Streep plays a wide variety of roles and genres. After Stephen Daldry’s The Hours and Robert Altman’s The Last Show, it was in two roles as funny as unexpected that she once again made her mark: as the cantankerous editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine in The Devil Wears Prada and Donna, a hippie who marries off her daughter in the musical Mamma Mia! She went on to star in biopics (The Iron Lady, Florence Foster Jenkins, Julie & Julia), political satyres (Lions for Lambs, Pentagon Papers, Don’t Look Up) and family films such as Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig, who serves as President of the Jury at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

Two women, two generations, two aspirations, and the same passion for the Seventh Art, brought together on the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière.

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