What is the longest standing ovation given at Cannes Film Festival?
Since its first annual event in 1946, the Cannes Film Festival has secured its status as a bastion of global cinema and an institution at which filmmakers dream of premiering their films. The much coveted Palme d’Or, the highest prize a film can be awarded, has launched directors into the cinematic stratosphere, heralding either emerging or established filmmaking talent as the hottest new thing. The announcement of each year’s recipient of the award is regularly debated and highly anticipated by filmmakers and audiences alike.
There is, however, an unofficial prize of sorts that the prestigious French festival has been known to grant films with: the standing ovation. Over the years, this sort of reception to a movie has become part of Cannes’ legacy, and with every annual event, there are more and more accounts of movies causing uproarious applause that lasts long after the final credits have played. It has, in fact, become such a regular occurrence that the standing ovation now invites some degree of derision, with the consensus often being that ‘any film will get a standing ovation these days’, thus losing its special status.
That being said, there is one film that holds the record for the longest-standing ovation in the entire history of the Cannes. Clocking in at a whopping 22 minutes – that’s longer than the duration of most of the Short Film Palme d’Or winners – is the length of applause for Pan’s Labyrinth, the sixth feature from Guillermo del Toro. The epic fantasy horror, which follows the main character of Ofelia as she navigates a series of trials within the magical Labyrinth, is a magical realist fable set against the backdrop of the Franco-led Spanish dictatorship. Premiering in 2006 at the festival’s 59th Annual Event, the film won over audiences in a way that’s been unmatched at the festival in the 17 years since.
Holding the record to this very day, Pan’s Labyrinth would go on to receive nominations for ‘Best Screenplay’ and ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ at that year’s Academy Awards and win the latter category at the BAFTAs, suggesting some correlation between the standing ovation and continued recognition at the major awards ceremonies. As the 2023 Cannes festival gets well underway, and gargantuan titles like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City are scheduled to premiere, time will soon tell if the standing ovation record for del Toro’s masterpiece will be overthrown.
