Cannes Film Festival 2016: the social event of the year

The 69^th edition of the Cannes Film Festival conquered Twitter with the hashtag #cannes2016

The Cannes Film Festival, set up for the first time in 1932 by Jean Zay, the French Ministry of Education and Arts at the time, soon became one of the most relevant cinematographic events in the world: the greatest protagonists of the international cinema have shown up every year, for the past seventy years, to present their work to the jury and the public.

This year’s edition, which took place from May 11^th and May 22^nd, was one of the most interesting in the last decade, sawing great directors, actors, producers gathering with some promising new entries. The Palm D’Or was awarded to Ken Loach, the eighty years old director of “I, Daniel Blake”, a story about an ordinary man and its endeavors to get assistance because unable to work. A great number of applauses also went to “Juste la fin du monde” of the French Xavier Dolan, that won the Grand Prize of the Festival, and to “American Honey” of the British director Andrea Arnold, which won the Jury Prize. The Best Director award was given ex aequo to Olivier Assayas for “Personal Shopper” and to Cristian Mungiu for “Bacalaureat”.

The magic of Cannes and the charm of the Montée des Marches, the famous runway that sees the stars passing by during the event, greatly fueled the social media world, especially Twitter: SocialMeter Anlysis monitored the hashtags #cannes16 and #cannes2016 between the 10^th and the 26^th of May and picked up more than 540k tweet from over 202k users. Twitter conversations on the Festival came from American, French and Thai users. A peak of tweets was registered on May 12^nd, on the opening of the Critic’s Week and during the tribute to Prince at the Cinéma de la Plage, where “Purple Rain” of Alber Magnoli was screened.

Among the most mentioned users there were the official account of the event @festival_cannes, a Thai entertainment account @Chymhongz and @opfavestyles, a profile on fashion. The most mentioned films among the hashtag were #personalshopper, #cafesociety and #theneondemon.