10 Cannes Film Festival Protests (That Had Nothing To Do With Shoes)
2. When Cannes Went A Step Further And Insulted An Entire Country
Also on this years list of controversies, festival officials at Cannes got their geography wrong after the bio in the programme listed director Hou Hsiao-hsien as being from mainland China, rather than Taiwan. The director is in competition with his film The Assassin. Political tensions between China and Taiwan are not exactly a recent revelation. Relations between the two have been strained since the 1940s, with China regarding Taiwan as one of its provinces. While Taiwan doesnt dispute this status, it does dispute the legitimacy of the Chinese Nationalist Party currently in government. The situation is so delicate that it prompted a 2014 report citing possibilities of a Chinese military strike on Taiwan. This didnt stop Cannes organisers from committing the faux pas, which they had to hurriedly correct by printing new programmes to deflect a storm of public criticism.
