The 2026 Cannes Film Festival Standing-O-Meter

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The 2026 Cannes Film Festival kicked off with an unusual moment: the first standing ovation wasn’t for a movie itself, but for director Guillermo Del Toro after a screening of his film Pan’s Labyrinth. He used the opportunity to voice his opposition to artificial intelligence, declaring “Fuck AI,” which was met with thunderous applause. This year’s festival is already proving to be unconventional, so our usual measure of standing ovations might not be very reliable.

Each year, Vulture calculates the total applause times reported by major industry publications at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. We’ve been tracking this data and have found some interesting differences. Over the last two Venice festivals and one Cannes festival, Variety reported 196 minutes of applause, The Hollywood Reporter reported 207.04 minutes, and Deadline reported 220.1 minutes – and that’s just for the films all three publications covered. Ideally, these numbers should be identical, since they’re measuring the same moments. However, Deadline’s calculations are usually about a minute longer than Variety’s, while The Hollywood Reporter remains neutral. Despite these discrepancies, we still track this data. It’s important for helping us determine which films are generating the most buzz and making informed predictions for our early Movie Fan List (MFL) draft picks. This year, we’re again calculating the average applause duration for every film at Cannes 2026, so you can see exactly how enthusiastically each one was received.

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After the audience finished a long standing ovation for the new film, star Hannah Einbinder joked, “So, what’s next?” Reports vary, but the applause lasted either six or nine minutes, which is a positive indicator for the film’s reception and director Jane Schoenbrun.

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2026-05-14 02:54