TikTok Partners With Cannes to Launch TikTok Film Contest - Vulture

Photo: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

Is this the yassification of cinema? When TikTok garnered popularity as a humble dance app, no one could have predicted the Renegade would be regarded next to some of the highest-caliber art forms of our generation. Today, the Cannes Film Festival announced that the French event that once banned red-carpet selfies will partner with TikTok to create the #TikTokShortFilm global competition, making the ByteDance-owned app officially highbrow. In-app video submissions must be between 30 seconds and three minutes long, meaning content creators won’t be allowed to use the app’s new ten-minute maximum video length to craft their films. Led by an unnamed well-known director, a jury will select three winning TikToks in three categories: Grand Prix, Best Script, and Best Editing. Cannes director Thierry Frémaux will be present for the accolades, which will be announced sometime during the festival to be held from May 17 to 28. Frémaux said the TikTok partnership is an attempt to share the festival with a “wider, much more global and just as much [of a] cinephile audience than ever before.” But hey, Gen Z doesn’t need a TikTok deal to make it pay attention to Cannes; it just needs Timothée Chalamet to snuggle up to Tilda Swinton in another metallic Tom Ford suit.

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