Who are the real losers in Netflix’s war with Cannes?

The streaming giant has pulled its films out of competition at this year’s Cannes festival, leaving both sides feeling vindicatedIf you told a time-travelling film critic from, say, 2005 that today’s industry headlines are being dominated by a fierce corporate feud between the Cannes film festival and home entertainment upstart Netflix, they’d be pretty well baffled.

Times have changed fast, though faster for Netflix, founded in 1997, than for Cannes – now in its 71st year – which has happily clung on to a classically prestigious model of cinematic art and exhibition, where discerning audiences gather in large, dark halls to watch, venerate and occasionally denigrate the visions of leading international auteurs.It’s a model vigilantly guarded not so much by Cannes’s own directors as by the cinema exhibitors of France, who have thus far safeguarded themselves from the economic threat of streaming culture with rigid protectionist laws

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