Local heroes Films on the road to somewhere

Donald Trump hates the globalism of Cannes and the movies it champions. But the body of work at the festival this year might just have surprised him

- By Philip Oltermann

If Donald Trump really wants to save Hollywood, maybe he needs to venture outside his comfort zone and watch more European art house cinema.

The Cannes film festival, which closed last Saturday, is in many ways the very definition of the "globalism" that the American president's Maga movement despises. The Marché du Film, where industry professionals strike their deals, was brimming with smart people from all over the world beckoning US producers with irresistible tax incentives - resulting in the kind of movies "produced in foreign lands" that the US president has proposed punishing with 100% tariffs.

But then in a screening room, that distinction was not so clear. In French director Amélie Bonnin's opening film Partir un Jour, celebrity chef Cécile is preparing to open her new haute cuisine diner in Paris when news reaches her of the ill health of her father, who runs a roadside restaurant out in the sticks. Cécile's father ribs his daughter about her disdain for the unsophisticated palates of the "yokels", but it's apparent that the film's sympathies lie a lorry-ride away from France's cosmopolitan centre.

If at the heart of the culture war waged by Trump and his populist allies in Europe runs a divide between locally rooted "somewheres" and cosmopolitan "anywheres", Partir un Jour is very much a "somewhere film". At Cannes, it turned out to be the beginning of a theme.