Cannes Film Festival said Netflix films can be screened at the prestigious film festival, but they can no longer compete in the event.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux announced the shake-up last week, citing a disagreement that arose last year between the Cannes Film Festival and Netflix as the reason behind the decision to halt streaming services from being eligible to compete in the event, The Washington Post noted.
Fremaux explained that he made the controversial decision to allow two Netflix films, Bong Joon-ho's "Okja" and Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories," into the festival last year.
The festival director said that at the time he hoped to convince Netflix to release the films in cinemas, but they refused.
Instead, the streaming service tried to obtain temporary permits that would allow for it to screen the films for less than a week in France in both cinemas and online at the same time, The Hollywood Reporter said.
However, this was in contravention of France's chronology laws, which stipulates a strict timeframe for which a movie can move from theatres to a streaming service and the move was dismissed.
Cannes Film Festival released a statement claiming to have "asked Netflix in vain to accept that these two films could reach the audience of French movie theatres and not only its subscribers," according to The New York Times.
However, the two parties could not reach an agreement and the festival changed its rules.
"The Netflix people loved the red carpet and would like to be present with other films," Fremaux said, per The Hollywood Reported. "But they understand that the intransigence of their own model is now the opposite of ours."
Fremaux also revealed a selfie ban for this year's festival, which runs from May 8 to 19 and is in its 71st year.
"On the red carpet, the trivial aspect and the slowing down provoked by the disorder which these selfies create tarnishes the quality of [the red carpet experience] and of the festival as a whole," he said, according to Vanity Fair.
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