Beyond the Red Carpet: What the Cannes Influencer Debate Misses

For all the annual outrage over influencers walking the red carpet at Cannes, one would think the festival had suddenly abandoned cinema for spectacle.

This year, social media timelines were crowded with criticism directed at influencers who attended the festival despite having no direct association with filmmaking.

Questions were raised about access and legitimacy, and about whether such appearances diluted the sanctity of one of cinema’s most prestigious events. The trolling even extended to actor Alia Bhatt, whose Cannes appearance prompted discussions about international recognition and visibility after clips circulated suggesting that sections of the foreign media paid limited attention to her presence.

Yet the debate often forgets a rather inconvenient truth. Glamour and Cannes have never existed in separate worlds.

For decades, actors, models, celebrities, and brand ambassadors have occupied Cannes’ red carpets regardless of whether they had films in competition—or, at times, films at the festival at all.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan became one of the festival’s most recognisable Indian faces long before conversations about influencers emerged, frequently attending in capacities unrelated to films screening in the festival’s official sections.

The same applies to many international celebrities from Hollywood and beyond. Cannes has always functioned simultaneously as a film festival, marketplace, networking hub, and global spectacle.

What has changed is not the presence of glamour, but the mechanics of visibility.

Reports and online discussions have pointed toward how digital media companies and brand partnerships facilitate influencer attendance. That ecosystem operates according to market logic. Influencers exist within an economy of impressions, engagement metrics, and brand collaborations. Such participation in global cultural events is simply an extension of that system. To be surprised by this is to misunderstand how contemporary media economies function.

More importantly, the presence of influencers on the red carpet does not erase the film’s screening inside the theatres.

The more pressing question is why conversations around serious cinema remain episodic and reactionary.

Consider Payal Kapadia’s trajectory. When All We Imagine as Light won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024, celebrations were widespread and deservedly so. But where was comparable attention when her short film Afternoon Clouds became the only Indian film selected for Cannes in 2017? Where was the sustained conversation around A Night of Knowing Nothing, which won the Golden Eye for best documentary in 2021?

Outside cinephile circles and scattered coverage, these achievements rarely entered mainstream discourse.

Even after All We Imagine As Light reached theatres, how many media outlets invested in sustained conversations around the film during its release week? How much space was devoted to helping audiences discover the work beyond celebratory headlines?

Visibility often arrives after validation from prestigious institutions rather than through consistent engagement with cinema itself.

This imbalance says less about Cannes and more about our media ecology.

Indian popular culture has long privileged spectacle, celebrity, and aspirational fantasy. That preference is neither new nor uniquely Indian. Popular cinema industries everywhere depend on glamour. The issue arises when glamour becomes the only language through which cinema is discussed.

And yet, despite these structural limitations, filmmakers continue to push boundaries. The ecosystem may be fragile, but it persists through collaboration and persistence.

A recent example is Shape of Momo by Tribeny Rai, which has gathered support from established industry figures and production networks while also securing theatrical visibility. It is an increasingly difficult feat for independent cinema.

Perhaps, then, the influencer discourse is not entirely misplaced. It has at least forced conversations about access, attention, and cultural priorities.

But if outrage begins and ends with who walked the red carpet, we risk ignoring the more difficult question. Why do films often receive less attention than the spectacle surrounding them?

The red carpet was never the problem. Our selective investment in cinema might be.

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