A man being bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. A yacht full of rich socialites vomiting and pooping. An un-simulated oral sex scene. Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron’s jellyfish sting. All these eye-opening movie scenes share something in common: They led to walkouts from critics and/or audience members at the Cannes Film Festival.
Getting booed or causing walkouts at Cannes has almost become a rite of passage for many of the best filmmakers of all time, from Martin Scorsese to David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, Terrence Malick, Oliver Assayas and David Cronenberg. And don’t get us started on the likes of Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noé, two filmmakers who court controversy and boos every year they show up to the Croisette. Not even films that have won Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or are immune to audience jeers (see last year’s “Triangle of Sadness,” plus the likes of “The Tree of Life,” “Wild at Heart” and more below).
With a latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival, controversy is already swirling. The 2023 festival opened with “Jeanne du Barry,” which marked the return of Johnny Depp to Cannes one year after his legal battle against Amber Heard. While the jury sided in Depp’s favor, he remains one of the industry’s most controversial figures and Cannes is played home to his acting comeback. The film’s director, Maïwenn, also recently admitted to spitting on a journalist at a restaurant.
Then there’s Catherine Corsini, the French filmmaker whose latest directorial effort, “Le Retour,” was a late addition to the competition lineup as the festival’s administration board investigated allegations of inappropriate incidents during filming. One such incident was the filming of a sexually-suggestive scene involving the film’s 15-year-old female protagonist. French reports also said Corsini was being accused of alleged harassment by crew members. Corsini denied such claims and called them “inaccurate.” In other words, Cannes 2023 already isn’t going down without a few controversies.
Variety looks back at the some of the most controversial films in Cannes history below.
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Crimes of the Future (2022)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Leave it to body horror master David Cronenberg to effortlessly freak Cannes out. At the 2022 festival, Cronenberg unveiled “Crimes of the Future” to at least a dozen walkouts as well as a seven-minute standing ovation. Talk about a polarizing response. “Crimes” was touted as Cronenberg’s long-awaited return to body horror, and the director even predicted walkouts at Cannes before the premiere. Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux play a couple in a distant future who have a sideshow act in which they remove extra organs from Mortensen’s body. Not all goes according to plan.
Cronenberg openly welcomed the walkouts during an interview with Variety, saying, “It doesn’t make me sad. I mean, the worst thing is if your movie is boring and I’ve been some screenings in Cannes where nobody walked out, but nobody cared about the movie either. And that would be very depressing.”
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Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness” won the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival (marking the director’s second Cannes victory along with “The Square”), but not everyone in attendance at the world premiere sat through the whole movie. That’s because “Triangle” is home to a raucous, stomach-churning extended sequence in which a group of rich socialites aboard a luxury cruise all get violently seasick during a storm and vomit, poop and scream in graphic, wild detail. The scenes runs up to 15 minutes and doesn’t hold back on going to disgusting limits. Those who stayed at the premiere greeted Östlund and his cast with an eight-minute standing ovation. The director, who is heading the competition jury at the 2023 festival, is already planning more Cannes uproar for the future. He recently told Variety about his next movie: “It’s going to create the biggest walkout in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.”
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The House That Jack Built (2018)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Lars von Trier more than proved he’s the enfant terrible of the Cannes Film Festival when his 2018 serial killer drama “The House That Jack Built” ignited a storm of controversy due to its graphic violence, which included a scene in which a duck’s legs are cut off and another in which the murder of two children is depicted through the lens of a sniper. Variety reported at the time that more than 100 people walked out of the film’s premiere, and there were audible groans and boos throughout the screening. “The House That Jack Built” stars Matt Dillon as a serial killer and follows the character as he mutilates and strangles his victims, who are primarily women. The child murders scene sent many audience members walking. By the time the end credits had stopped rolling, the balcony of the theater was reportedly half empty.
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The Brown Bunny (2003)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Vincent Gallo’s experimental road movie “The Brown Bunny” is one of the most controversial films in Cannes Film Festival history. Gallo stars as a tormented motorcycle racer who is haunted by the memories of his former lover (Chloë Sevigny) on a cross-country road trip. An un-simulated oral sex scene between Sevingy and Gallo generated outrage and walkouts at Cannes, and the film’s tumultuous reception was only intensified by a public dispute between Gallo and Roger Ebert after the film critic called the movie the worst film in the history of Cannes. Variety panned the film as “a self-indulgent resurrection of ’70s road movie aesthetics” and the very “definition of navel-gazing cinema.”
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Personal Shopper (2016)
Image Credit: Everett Collection “There’s a certain perverse genius to unveiling a ghost movie at Cannes that relies on the audience to deliver the ‘boos’ as the final credits roll, although one doubts that’s quite what Olivier Assayas was going for with his peculiar ‘Personal Shopper,’” Variety wrote in its review of Assayas’ second collaboration with Kristen Stewart following the acclaimed “Clouds of Sils Maria.” This slow-burn study of grief stars Stewart as a ghost-whisperer who is unnerved by spirits following the death of her brother. But are these spirits real or is the character’s torment just a bi-product of her grief? The ambiguity Assayas plays with is far more haunting than the supernatural elements at play, but not everyone at Cannes was satisfied.
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Taxi Driver (1976)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” is widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, so it’s never not shocking to hear the film got its start with boos and walkouts at the Cannes Film Festival. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film “drew loud boos from the crowd, many of whom streamed out of the theater ashen-faced over the film’s ultraviolent climax.” Jodie Foster was only a teenager at the time, but she remembered of the festival and the film’s backlash: “The whole issue about the violence in the movie kind of exploded. Marty, Bobby and Harvey kind of got stuck at the Hotel du Cap and didn’t come out very much.” Regardless of how festival attendees reacted to the film, the Tennessee Williams-led Cannes jury awarded “Taxi Driver” the top prize with the Palme d’Or.
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Wild at Heart (1990)
Image Credit: Everett Collection “Taxi Driver” isn’t the only Palme d’Or winner that ignited boos and walkouts. Enter David Lynch’s 1990 romantic crime movie “Wild at Heart,” starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as young lovers who go on the run after a bounty is placed on one of them. The film earned boos and cheers after it screened, but there were even more vocal detractors when it was announced the movie had won the top prize at the festival. Variety was a fan of the movie, writing in a review: “Joltingly violent, wickedly funny and rivetingly erotic, David Lynch’s ‘Wild at Heart’ is a rollercoaster ride to redemption through an American gothic heart of darkness…The brutal opening signals that this film is not for the faint of heart.”
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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Image Credit: Everett Collection David Lynch returned to Cannes just two years after winning the Palme d’Or, and he once again delivered a polarizing movie. This time Lynch upset viewers with “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” his highly-anticipated movie prequel to the landmark “Twin Peaks” series. The film’s Cannes reception has become something of a myth. Reports surfaced out of the festival that “Fire Walk With Me” was widely booed, although Roger Ebert famously disputed such claims. What everyone could agree on was that Lynch threw a visceral, challenging curveball at “Twin Peaks” fans with this prequel, a surreal nightmare that tracks the last week in the life of Laura Palmer. “Ultimately, this feels like David Lynch treading water before moving on to new terrain,” Variety wrote in its review.
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Crash (1996)
Image Credit: Everett Collection David Cronenberg has predicted walkouts for his latest Palme d’Or contender “Crimes of the Future,” but it might be impossible to top the outrage that greeted his erotic psychological thriller “Crash” at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. The film casts James Spader as a film producer who becomes involved with a group of people who turn to car crashes in order to get sexually aroused. Cannes viewers booed the film and stormed out of the theater, and even jury president Francis Ford Coppola said that some jurors “abstained very passionately” to the decision to award “Crash” a special jury prize. From Variety’s review: “A forbiddingly frigid piece of esoteric erotica, ‘Crash’ goes all the way with a sexual obsession that few people will turn on to. Faithfully adapted from J.G. Ballard’s 1973 cult novel and directed with precise control, this attempt to transform a fetish for automobile accidents and bodily injury into a metaphor for human adaptation to the technological age remains an exceedingly intellectual work of cold sensuality.”
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Irréversible (2002)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Gaspar Noé’s first Palme d’or contender, “Irréversible” was so controversial at the Cannes Film Festival that it led Newsweek to proclaim, “This will be the most walked-out-of movie of 2003.” Even fans of the movie such as Roger Ebert would admit, “This is a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable.” Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel play two men who seek to avenge the rape of a woman (Monica Bellucci). The film is told in reverse chronological order, but the scene that caused outrage was a grueling 10-minute one-take detailing the rape of Alex, who is also beaten into a coma. Reports emerged out of Cannes that several audience members fainted, threw up, and/or walked out during the “Irréversible” screening. Other shocking acts of violence in the film include a man being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
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Tropical Malady (2004)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the jury prize at Cannes with “Tropical Malady,” but the drama still led to viewers booing and being utterly perplexed. The script is split into two narratives. The first story is a romance between two men, and the second is a far more mysterious tale of a solider haunted by the spirit of a shaman while lost in the woods. Weerasethakul’s dreamlike narratives are always challenging, but Variety memorably proclaimed out of Cannes that “Tropical Malady” was downright “incomprehensible.” The review added: “Working in a boldly avant garde style, helmer wrestles with the mysteries of love and the underbelly of emotions. He is overly trusting, however, that the inconsequential events he films will build into something meaningful.”
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Marie Antoinette (2006)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” takes the historical epic and turns it into a punk rock contemporary coming-of-age movie with “Marie Antoinette,” which generated boos at Cannes reportedly because it threw French history to the wind and seemingly relished in the monarchy’s decadent wealth instead of criticizing it (although the film’s sensory overload goes a long way in undercutting the materialism on display). Roger Ebert famously clarified the reaction, saying the film only received a small handful of boos. He accused the media of sensationalizing the reaction. Still, “Marie Antoinette” was not the home run at Cannes that many were expecting from a Coppola-Kirsten Dunst reunion. The film has garnered more critical acclaim over the years.
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Southland Tales (2006)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Richard Kelly’s dystopian comedy “Southland Tales” featured the kind of starry cast that Cannes loves (Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore and Justin Timberlake), but the film’s reception at the festival was more or less a trainwreck. Roger Ebert blasted the film as the biggest Cannes disaster since “The Brown Bunny” based on the amount of boos and critical pans that erupted after the screening. As Variety wrote in its review: “Rarely has a picture been so self-consciously designed to be a culturally meaningful touchstone, and fallen so woefully short… This wannabe visionary epic may find cult believers among gullible undergrads, but the fiasco at hand will be evident to everyone else, making commercial prospects exceedingly dicey.”
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Antichrist (2009)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Years before “The House That Jack Built,” Lars von Trier delivered another Cannes controversy with his experimental horror movie “Antichrist.” Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a couple who descend into madness at a cabin in the woods following the tragic death of their son. The husband loses his grasp on reality as he’s plagued by sickening visions, while the wife starts to embrace violent and sadomasochistic behavior. Scenes of castration and bloody masturbation sent Cannes audiences storming out of the theater. Reuters added that the film’s screening “elicited derisive laughter, gasps of disbelief, a smattering of applause and loud boos.” Variety added in its review: “Most of the director’s usual fans will find this outing risible, off-putting or both.”
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Enter the Void (2009)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Gaspar Noé’s experimental drama “Enter the Void” did not stir up as much controversy at Cannes as “Irréversible” but it proved polarizing nonetheless. As IndieWire reported out of the festival: “This is first and foremost an endurance test. Stirring boos and bravos this afternoon in Cannes, it ranks up there in terms of ambition and provocation with Lars von Trier’s ‘Antichrist.’” Noé presented a nearly three-hour unfinished cut of the movie, which is told from the perspective of a dead man’s consciousness. “I thought people would be booing, because people [do that to my movies],” Noé said at the film’s Cannes press conference. “I kind of like that, but I didn’t get it this time…What was it that Douglas Sirk said to Fassbender? To make a good melodrama you need, sperm, blood and tears. These are in this film.”
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The Tree of Life (2011)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Add Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” to the list of Palme d’Or winners that elicited boos from critics. As Entertainment Weekly reported out of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, “It’s daunting to describe Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life,’ but scattered audience members at its first screening in Cannes needed only one syllable: boo. The many supporters of the movie pushed back with counter-applause, but it was a shocking way for the movie to debut.” As one critic in attendance noted: “The booing at the end of today’s ‘Tree of Life’ screening was an ugly, animalistic thing that may explain why Malick doesn’t do press.” The Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain-starring film tells a coming-of-age story in 1950s Texas and juxtaposes the intimate family story with the expansiveness of the cosmos, as Malick famously breaks from the main story to depict the creation of the world.
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The Paperboy (2012)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Lee Daniels’ “The Paperboy” was one of the more ridiculed Palme d’Or contenders at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The pulpy and dirty Florida crime drama stars Matthew McCounaghey as a reporter investigating a murder involving a death row inmate. Daniels goes full hot-and-sweaty trash with this film, memorably including one scene in which Nicole Kidman simulates peeing on Zac Efron after his character gets stung by a jellyfish. Some critics called “The Paperboy” fearless, while others derided it as campy filth. The film’s sleaziness caught Cannes by surprise, leading audience members to jeer at the film during its premiere screening.
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Holy Motors (2012)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors” is often cited by critics as one of the best movies of the 21st century, but it premiered at Cannes in 2012 to a rollercoaster level of responses. The elusive and enigmatic drama stars Denis Lavant as a man who is seemingly an actor. The man dresses up in different costumes and takes on different skins as he travels throughout London. As The Guardian reported out of Cannes: “Its first screening was greeted by boos drowned out by cheers, by volleys of ecstatic and furious tweets and by one big question: what the hell was it all about?” Variety called the film “certifiably nuts” in its review, adding about the film’s premiere: “Periodically the silence in the theater was broken by laughs and gasps, triggered by an extended glimpse of full-frontal nudity or a sudden burst of frenzied violence, but Cannes audiences are used to those sorts of triggers, often the signature of provocateurs like Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noé.”
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Only God Forgives (2013)
Image Credit: Everett Collection “Only God Forgives” was supposed to be Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling’s celebrated return to Cannes after the breakout success of “Drive,” which won Refn the Cannes best director prize at the 2011 festival. Anyone hoping that Refn and Gosling’s reunion would yield similar results was surely crushed when the ultra-violent “Only God Forgives” crashed and burned at the 2013 festival. Gosling plays an American criminal in Bangkok who is forced to wade through the city’s underworld after his mother tasks him with avenging his brother’s death. Only Kristin Scott Thomas’ performance survived mostly unscathed by the press. Variety called the film a “vapid, nihilistic exercise in style” and added, “A nasty, hyperviolent thriller set around Bangkok’s seedy brothels and boxing rings, the film was booed at its press screening earlier this morning, countered (as boos often are) by defiant shouts of ‘Bravo!’ and scattered applause, indicating pockets of support.”
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Grace of Monaco (2014)
Image Credit: Everett Collection “Grace Kelly’s post-Hollywood life may not have been the fairy tale some thought it to be, but you wouldn’t know it from director Olivier Dahan’s cornball melodrama,” Variety wrote in its review of the Nicole Kidman-starring biographical flop. The film opened the 2014 festival and is widely considered one of the weakest starts to Cannes of the 2010s. The film earned terrible reviews across the board, with many shrugging it off as poorly-made Oscar bait. As France24 reported at the time: “The festival took off and quickly came crashing down to earth on Wednesday with ‘Grace of Monaco,’ a dreadful Grace Kelly biopic that earned boos and hisses from a rightfully irritated press at the morning screening… Uninspiring from its first frame to its last, ‘Grace of Monaco’ is a piece of hagiographic fluff that cobbles together tropes from other recent biopics of famous women who just wanted to, you know, live and love without the pressure of public expectation.”
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Lost River (2014)
Image Credit: Everett Collection It was back-to-back Cannes misses for Ryan Gosling, who followed up “Only God Forgives” boos in 2013 with even more boos for his 2014 feature directorial debut “Lost River.” As Variety reported: “Ryan Gosling’s gonzo directorial debut ‘Lost River’ provided this year’s Cannes Festival with some of its most memorable WTF moments. In the aftermath of its Tuesday screening, Critics beat a fast path to Twitter to spread vitriol, disbelief and, in a few rare instances, praise for a film that is partially set in an underwater city. It’s a trippy tale that owes debts to David Lynch and Gosling’s ‘Drive’ director Nicolas Winding Refn and premiered to boos and a dollop of applause.” Variety’s review excoriated the film, comparing it to a trainwreck.
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Sea of Trees (2015)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Gus Van Sant’s “Sea of Trees” was perhaps the biggest flop of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Van Sant is a Palme d’Or winner and had Matthew McConaughey as his lead, following the actor’s Oscar victory for “Dallas Buyers Club.” McConaughey stars as an American man who travels to Aokigahara, aka the “Japanese suicide forest,” to end his life, only to meet a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe) who’s there to do the same thing. Variety reported the film was greeted with a “chorus of boos.” McConaunghey stood up for the film at its Cannes press conference, telling press, “I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be invited. I’m happy that the film got in. It was a great experience for me. I liked the experience of making it, and I’m glad we got the opportunity to introduce it to the world.”
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The Neon Demon (2016)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Nicolas Winding Refn followed one divisive Cannes premiere (“Only God Forgives”) with another thanks to the 2016 debut of “The Neon Demon,” a fashion industry-set psychological horror starring Elle Fanning as a young model thrown into the corrupt underworld of Hollywood beauty. Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in his review: “Refn has made a baroquely kinky gross-out surrealist horror film set in the L.A. fashion world. It’s not boring, but there’s less to it than meets the eyeball…Beauty mingles with mangled flesh, and each fastidiously slick image seems to have come out of ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ or ‘The Shining’ or a very sick version of a Calvin Klein commercial. Every scene, every shot, every line of dialogue, every pause is so hypnotically composed, so luxuriously over-deliberate, that the audience can’t help but assume that Refn knows exactly what he’s doing — that he’s setting us up for the kill.” IndieWire reported out of Cannes that reactions to the film ranged from boos to walkouts to audience members literally yelling at the screen in outrage.
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” earned strong critical support of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, but that didn’t stop audience members from booing the disturbing feature. As Variety’s Guy Lodge tweeted at the time, “Predictable booing after ‘Killing of a Sacred Deer’ from critics who somehow resent being challenged or chafed at Cannes. It’s magnificent.” The nightmarish film stars Colin Farrell as a surgeon who befriends a young teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) after killing his mother on the operating table. The boy slowly enacts revenge on the surgeon’s family, the matriarch of which is played by Nicole Kidman. Variety film critic Peter Debruge was a fan, writing that “Farrell and Kidman are astonishingly gifted at playing the subtext of every scene.”
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