Cannes Festival dual posters celebrate timeless romance with cinema

For the first time in its history, the Cannes Film Festival is featuring a double poster. Bathed in soft, pastel colours, the scenes of two lovers embracing on a beach comes from the 1966 Palme d'Or winner Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman) by French director Claude Lelouch.

Festival organisers said the special double poster for the 2025 event is intended to celebrate a moment of tenderness, simplicity and beauty during difficult times.

"To (re)unite; to bring bodies, hearts and souls closer together; to encourage freedom and portray movement in order to perpetuate it; to embody the whirlwind of life to celebrate it, again and again," they said in a statement this week.

The scenes are snapshots from the romantic drama in which lead actors Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant can be seen in a warm embrace, with a hazy beach scene in the background.

Down on the beach

Written by Pierre Uytterhoeven and Lelouch, Un homme et une femme is the story of a young widow and widower who meet by chance at their children's boarding school.

They fall in love, but their budding relationship is complicated by the memories of their deceased spouses.

The film was shot in Paris, Monte Carlo and on the beach in Deauville on a tight budget, which partly explains why Lelouch chose to use a mix of black and white as well as colour film.

The love scene was shot in the Hotel Barrière Le Normandy Deauville, which named a suite after the film's title.

Un homme et une femme won the Palme d'or in Cannes in 1966, and went on to claim two Oscars in Hollywood in 1967 and the dozens of other awards around the world.

And the original music score by Francis Lai scooped up a Golden Globe in 1967.

"This film was a miracle. And you can't explain miracles," Lelouch, 87, told French media on Monday.

"We thought we were making a good little film. But we didn't think this film would go around the world, win Oscars, or even the Palme d'Or.

"Tonight, I'm very, very moved because all these people are no longer here. They've gone somewhere, and soon I'll be joining them.".

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Famous embrace lives on

The story kept up the momentum with the sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later, released in 1986, followed by The Best Years of a Life, which was released in 2019.

Aimée, who had starred in Federico Fellini's films La Dolce Vita (1960) and 81/2 (1962) went on to win awards at the Cannes Film Festival in later years.

Trintignant won Best Actor for his role in Z directed by Costa-Gavras (1969), while Aimée won Best Actress for Marco Bellochio's A Leap in the Dark (Salto nel vuoto), in 1980.

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Although the two actors are no longer alive, the festival organisers said they are keen to pay homage to "magnificent heroes of delicacy and seduction", whose "passionate love triumphs over despair".

There are 20 films in the running for the coveted Palme d'Or at the two-week festival, which gets underway on 13 May.

In the main competition line-up are veteran American directors Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson, Iran's Jafar Panahi and perennial Belgian favourites the Dardenne brothers who will rub shoulders with fresh talent.

French screen legend Juliette Binoche will chair the jury, which has yet to be announced. French director Amelie Bonnin will open the event with her debut feature Leave One Day.