Cannes 2025: Richard Linklater confident that Donald Trump film tariffs “not going to happen”
While speaking at a Cannes Film Festival press conference for his feature Nouvelle Vague, director Richard Linklater seemed confident that Trump won’t get his hands too deep into the film industry after all.
Trump recently proposed a 100% tariff on all films “produced in foreign lands“. In his social media posts detailing the matter, he claimed he had now authorised the Commerce Department and the US Trade Representative to begin implementing this new tariff immediately.
However, Linklater was so confident that this matter would not come to light that he used a joking tone. “That man changes his mind 50 times,” Linklater said about President Trump. “Film is the number one export industry of the US.”
Zoey Deutch, who plays Jean Seberg in the French-language movie, added: “It would be nice to make more movies in Los Angeles and Hollywood, that has the biggest history of studios and the cultures and the crews. It would be so beautiful.”
Linklater, who is the director behind the Before Sunrise trilogy, also added that he was “optimistic” about the future of film. ”Cinema is optimistic. It has to be. It always feels under attack,” he said.
He expanded on the knowledge his lengthy career has provided him, stating: “I’ve had movies out for over 30 years now, and it’s always just, ’things are terrible, things are tough, it’s a struggle’, but it always has been. Cinema is our commerce. There’s always a threat. But there’s something perpetual that we as an audience like stories told to us.”
Other directors have been less optimistic about the industry. First-time director Kristen Stewart, in Cannes for her debut The Chronology of Water, stated, “Trump’s shadow is bleak and very dark … we should expect the worst and fight for the best.”
In other news, Linklater’s love letter to the French New Wave received a ten-minute standing ovation at Cannes. It will likely hit cinemas in October.
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