Bazin used to say that the film frame is an open window onto the world. The Cannes Film Festival chose for this year’s poster a still from Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, which is actually a good example of that Bazinian bon mot. Here, we find that window within the frame symbolizing the gate to the cinema.

And what we ask ourselves when we see this image on every corner is: What is there beyond that window? What is she going towards? What mysteries lie behind that light? I can’t stop picturing her fascinated expression of discovery and wonder. An expression that we can also imagine for the first spectators of the old cinemas, when illuminated by the screen’s light and muffled by the music of a piano at the end of the lounge, they discovered that new world called film. And so I do: I’m climbing the mountains that Monica Vitti is watching; I’m travelling to lots of unknown countries, drenching myself in their cultures and their people, gaining knowledge of their stories and their feelings.

And this is a world which, despite being quite elitist and commercial, always finds a place for forgotten industries, because that’s the objective of film festivals, isn’t it? Countries like Malaysia, Serbia and the Philippines have the opportunity of introducing themselves, of ignoring their censorships and restrictions. For that, for making cinema more accessible beyond its native frontiers and definitively, for opening the window, thank you.

Andrea Franco