The disagreement born of Cannes’ 2017 decision to ban Netflix-bound films from competition has come to a head. On Wednesday, April 11, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told Variety that the streaming service decided to sever ties with the 61-year-old film festival, widely considered the most prestigious in the world.
Sarandos said that Cannes’ choice (to disallow competitive film entries without a theatrical distribution agreement in France) “sent a clear message,” and that “There’s a risk in us … having our films and filmmakers treated disrespectfully at the festival. They’ve set the tone. I don’t think it would be good for us to be there.” Netflix could still screen its films out of competition, but Sarandos showed little interest in such an arrangement.
In May 2017, the festival issued a statement regarding Netflix’s choice not to release its films (that includes both films produced in-house and films whose rights Netflix purchased in exclusivity) in French theaters. The festival’s board decided, against the wishes of many French theater owners, not to immediately disqualify Netflix’s 2017 entries — Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories — from competition, but decreed a requirement for future competitive entries to have distribution deals with French theaters.
Following the statement last year, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote on his Facebook account that “the establishment [is] closing ranks against us,” and Sarandos told Variety that he sees the decision in complete contrast with “the spirit of any film festival in the world… Film festivals are to help films get discovered so they can get distribution.” French law states that 36 months must elapse between a film’s theatrical release and its appearance on a streaming platform, which is obviously a model that doesn’t work for Netflix.
It’s pretty clear there’s some bad blood on both sides, as Sarandos constantly name-drops Cannes’ artistic director, Thierry Fremaux, citing Fremaux’s implementation of a red carpet selfie ban as evidence of archaic views on technology and even saying “The festival has chosen to celebrate distribution rather than the art of cinema … We are choosing to be about the future of cinema. If Cannes is choosing to be stuck in the history of cinema, that’s fine.”
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.