Cannes Power Outage Disrupts City, Festival Continues

Cannes got its own cliff-hanger ending on Saturday, the final day of the 78th film festival, when a power outage, apparently caused by deliberate sabotage, shut down the power grid serving the city and much of the surrounding region.

From 10:00 am on, the outage disrupted screenings, forced cafes and restaurants to close, or shift to cash-only payments, and even caused chaos on the streets as traffic lights winked off.

The blackout only caused minor disruption at the Palais, the festival headquarters, with generators kicking in to restore power. The press conference for Kelly Reichardt’s Mastermind, with the director and cast members Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal, went ahead as planned at 10.15 am local time. In a statement, the festival said the Palais’ independent power supply meant that tonight’s closing ceremony would not be affected.

The blackout hit the city of Cannes and surrounding towns, depriving 160,000 households of power supply, said French electricity transmission system operator RTE on its X account.

Foul play is suspected in the outage. French media is reporting a fire, a suspected arson attack, at an electricity station outside the town of Tanneron overnight, to Cannes’ southwest, and the downing of electrical pylons close to the towns of Mougins, just north of Cannes, and Villeneuve-Loubet and Cagnes-su to the northeast. French radio network Franceinfo cited local police and sources from the French police Ministry of Interior that said there were signs that the downed pylons had been sawn through.

By 3:00 pm, the electricity supply had been partially restored, with traffic lights working again and some shops operating with minimal power. Most of the hotels and apartments around the city were also back online, meaning there’s unlikely to be any disruption for the VIP guests attending tonight’s ceremony.