CANNES: Cannes began rolling out the red carpet Tuesday as stars including Kristen Stewart and Blake Lively swept into town for the world’s top film festival whose dazzle is being tested by stiff security measures.
On foot, horseback and motorbikes, police patrolled the Croisette, a strip of beach lined with ultra-luxury stores and headed by the Palais des Festivals, the main venue for the cinema extravaganza which gets under way on Wednesday night.
A small army of workers carefully unrolled strips of the 60-meter red carpet that will host stars such as Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Kirsten Dunst, Charlize Theron and George Clooney over the 12-day festival.
The first of the big Hollywood films, Foster’s drama about a Wall Street tipster “Money Monster” starring Clooney and Roberts screens Thursday. And Steven Spielberg will roll out his blockbuster version of Roald Dahl’s “The BFG” at the weekend, although neither are competing for the main Palme d’Or prize.
But already some of the main competition films are stirring controversy, with Juliette Binoche starring in a period horror “Slack Bay” about Victorian tourists eaten by the locals in northern France.
Another, “The Neon Demon,” also features cannibalism, this time among supermodels in Los Angeles according to the film’s Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who is notorious for depicting extreme violence. The population of Cannes is set to nearly triple to some 200,000 people as film producers, industry workers and actors roll in to soak up the glamor, sell films, network and party.
The festival has also created a security headache worthy of a movie script for French authorities six months after a series of attacks left 130 people dead in Paris.
“We must keep in mind as we prepare to open this festival, that we are... faced with an enemy determined to strike us at any moment,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on a visit to Cannes Monday.
As a result an “extraordinary mobilization” of security forces has been put in place, with 400 private security agents guarding the Palais des Festivals alone, where the main films are shown.
Hollywood stars Blake Lively and Kristen Stewart were snapped arriving in town, according to Vogue magazine’s Twitter feed.
The pair star in Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society” which will open the event on Wednesday on what is forecast to be a rain-drenched evening.
On foot, horseback and motorbikes, police patrolled the Croisette, a strip of beach lined with ultra-luxury stores and headed by the Palais des Festivals, the main venue for the cinema extravaganza which gets under way on Wednesday night.
A small army of workers carefully unrolled strips of the 60-meter red carpet that will host stars such as Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster, Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Kirsten Dunst, Charlize Theron and George Clooney over the 12-day festival.
The first of the big Hollywood films, Foster’s drama about a Wall Street tipster “Money Monster” starring Clooney and Roberts screens Thursday. And Steven Spielberg will roll out his blockbuster version of Roald Dahl’s “The BFG” at the weekend, although neither are competing for the main Palme d’Or prize.
But already some of the main competition films are stirring controversy, with Juliette Binoche starring in a period horror “Slack Bay” about Victorian tourists eaten by the locals in northern France.
Another, “The Neon Demon,” also features cannibalism, this time among supermodels in Los Angeles according to the film’s Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who is notorious for depicting extreme violence. The population of Cannes is set to nearly triple to some 200,000 people as film producers, industry workers and actors roll in to soak up the glamor, sell films, network and party.
The festival has also created a security headache worthy of a movie script for French authorities six months after a series of attacks left 130 people dead in Paris.
“We must keep in mind as we prepare to open this festival, that we are... faced with an enemy determined to strike us at any moment,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on a visit to Cannes Monday.
As a result an “extraordinary mobilization” of security forces has been put in place, with 400 private security agents guarding the Palais des Festivals alone, where the main films are shown.
Hollywood stars Blake Lively and Kristen Stewart were snapped arriving in town, according to Vogue magazine’s Twitter feed.
The pair star in Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society” which will open the event on Wednesday on what is forecast to be a rain-drenched evening.
