The rain emptied the beach and soaked the red carpet leading to the cinema. Gusts of wind blew away the seagulls, but at the Normandy Hotel's bar, the flagship hotel of the Barrière Group and a major sponsor of the American Film Festival in Deauville, Calvados – which runs until September 15 – people were delighted: The Americans are back.
After Covid-19, the writers' strike and then the actors' strike in Hollywood, in 2023, kept away the big names who had been treading the boards of the Normandy seaside resort for half a century.
But now Michael Douglas, James Gray, Michelle Williams, Natalie Portman, Francis Ford Coppola, Daisy Ridley (British, but star of Star Wars), Sean Baker – director of Anora, Palme d'or at Cannes – and actress Mikey Madison, Malia Ann (Obama, daughter of the former US president, here to present her short film, The Heart), Sebastian Stan (Captain America) had all arrived for the festival this year. Not to mention the filmmakers of still little or unknown films presented in competition.
It all began in 1974, when Lionel Chouchan, an advertising executive from Normandy, and his friend André Halimi (1930-2013), a film critic, proposed their film festival project to the mayor of Deauville, Michel d'Ornano (1924-1991). As the former minister's wife, Anne d'Ornano, writes in the introduction to Gilles Penso's book Deauville, 50 ans de cinéma américain ("50 years of American Cinema"), "Michel liked the idea right away, but, cautious, he asked Claude Lelouch and Philippe Labro what they thought. Both were enthusiastic." On September 2, 1975, the story began. With Nashville, by Robert Altman, War and Love, by Woody Allen, Jonathan Livingston the Seagull, by Hall Bartlett.
A 50th edition. It also marked a turning point. One name is conspicuously missing from this memorial book published in August: Bruno Barde. The man had been running the festival for 30 years, since Lionel Chouchan gave him the reins in 1995. The director was relieved of his duties in mid-June, pending the conclusions of an "internal investigation" after Mediapart published a series of testimonials implicating him. Seven young female employees denounced behavior resembling sexual harassment: Inappropriate gestures, macho remarks, indecent propositions. No complaint has been lodged, and he denied the claims, but the organization did not hesitate to ask him to step aside immediately.
Especially as the house was on fire: Bruno Barde, 67, used to run not only the Deauville American Film Festival, but also the Gérardmer (Vosges) Fantastic Film Festival in eastern France and Reims polar in the northeast of the country... In short, the entire activity of the Le Public Système Cinéma agency, which Lionel Chouchan had created, including press relations for many leading films and the follow-up of important directors, made Barde a key figure in the French film industry.
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