A major power outage struck southeastern France on the morning of Saturday, May 24, threatening to jeopardize the Cannes Film Festival's closing celebrations, including the much-anticipated Palme d'Or ceremony. Police said they have opened an investigation into possible arson.
Power was restored hours before the ceremony, around 3 pm local time, as music began blasting again from beachfront speakers. The end of the blackout was greeted with loud cheers from locals.
Earlier, about 160,000 households in the Alpes-Maritimes department lost electricity after a high-voltage line fell Saturday morning, electricity network operator RTE said on X. The outage came hours after a fire at an electrical substation near Cannes overnight had already weakened the grid.
The fire reportedly broke out at the Tanneron substation, about 12 kilometres northwest of central Cannes, at around 2:00 am, local authorities told Agence France-Presse. Seven fire engines were called to the scene and the blaze was extinguished at 07:00 am, it said.
Cannes Mayor David Lisnard said that it had been "targeted in a criminal act." The pylon in Villeneuve-Loubet, 15 kilometres to the northeast of the city of Nice, was also sabotaged, with three of its legs found to have been cut, the local prosecutor's office said.
"We are looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately," said a police spokesperson for the French national gendarmerie. In a statement, Laurent Hottiaux, the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes department, condemned "serious acts of damage to electrical infrastructures." "All resources are mobilized to identify, track down, arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of these acts," said Hottiaux.
Cannes Film Festival organizers confirmed the outage affected the early activities of Saturday and said the Palais des Festivals – the Croisette's main venue – had switched to an independent power supply. "All scheduled events and screenings, including the Closing Ceremony, will proceed as planned and under normal conditions," the statement said. "At this stage, the cause of the outage has not yet been identified. Restoration efforts are underway."
Traffic lights in parts of Cannes and the surrounding city of Antibes stopped working after 10 am, leading to traffic jams and confusion in city centers. Most shops along the Croisette remained closed, and local food kiosks were only accepting cash. Train service in Cannes was also disrupted. Screenings at the Cineum, one of the festival's satellite venues, were briefly suspended, the festival added.
The Palme d'Or – the festival's most prestigious prize – was set to be awarded Saturday night, with top contenders including Joachim Trier's family drama Sentimental Value, Jafar Panahi's revenge thriller It Was Just an Accident, Kleber Mendonça Filho's political thriller The Secret Agent, and Óliver Laxe's desert road trip Sirât.