On May 13, 2025, projectors from around the world will once again converge on the Palais des Festivals, where the curtain will open on the 78th edition of the Cannes Festival. And from the opening ceremony, a moment of emotion is expected: the delivery of the palm of gold of honor to Robert de Niro. This gesture, solemn and symbolic, comes to greet a masterful figure of the 7th art, an actor whose filmography alone embodies half a century of world cinema, and an artistic conscience which has crossed eras, genres, borders.
A triumphant return to the Croisette
Fourteen years after chairing the Cannois jury in 2011, Robert de Niro returns to La Croisette, this time as a celebrated ic. At the announcement of this distinction, the actor expressed a sincere emotion:
“” I have very strong feelings for the Cannes Film Festival. Especially today, while so much in the world separate us, Cannes brings us together: storytellers, filmmakers, admirers and friends. It is as if we came home. »»
This word “house” sounds deeply. Because for Robert de Niro, Cannes has never been a simple festival. It is a place of rooting, a cinema territory where he knew his first international triumphs, but also moments of risk, introspection, artistic revelations.
Cannes, mirror of an extraordinary career
The relationship between Robert de Niro and the Cannes Film Festival is old, passionate, and rich in founding stages. As early as 1976, he trampled on the steps of the Palais as a interpreter of two major films in official selection: 1900 by Bernardo Bertolucci, grandiose political fresco, and above all Driver taxi by Martin Scorsese. The latter won the Palme d’Or in a controversial climate, the violence of the film that caused hoots during projections. This palm, however, will remain one of the most emblematic in the history of the festival.
In Driver taxiDe Niro embodies Travis Bickle, veteran of Vietnam sinking in paranoia and urban violence. His hallucinated gaze, his body that turns, and the famous improvised scene of the mirror – ” You talkin ‘to me? – – have become universal cultural benchmarks. De Niro does not play his roles: he lives, absorbs them, transcends them.
Over the decades, he returned to Cannes to defend works often breaking with Hollywood codes. In 1983, in The puppet waltz From Scorsese, he plays an obsessive fan, foreshadowing our media era. In 1984, Once upon a time in America De Sergio Leone is projected in a truncated version, misunderstood when it is released but today considered as a masterpiece of memory cinema. In 1986, Assignment From Roland Joffé, where he camps a former slave merchant in search of redemption, obtains the golden palm.
A career engraved in marble
Born in 1943 in New York, Robert de Niro is the fruit of an artistic environment. His parents, both painters, transmit a taste for creation to him. He began his career with Brian de Palma, but it was his meeting with Martin Scorsese who will define his journey. Mean Streets (1973) marks the start of a mythical duo. Their collaboration will give birth to major works: Bull raging (1980), The freed (1990), Casino (1995), Live nerves (1991), The Irishman (2019) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
In Godfather II (1974), De Niro takes up the role of Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando in the first opus. For this role, he learns the Sicilian and adopts Brando’s gestures with surgical precision. Result: an Oscar for best supporting role, and global recognition.
The actor-caméléon, between transformation and truth
Robert de Niro is renowned for his extreme commitment. He takes 30 kilos for Bull ragingdrive a taxi to Driver taxilearns the saxophone for New York, New York. It covers false tattoos in Live nervesgets lost in the solitude of marginal characters, and questions his own celebrity in The puppet waltz. His game is an alchemy between technical precision and sensory immersion.
But he never wanted to freeze into a type of role. From the 1990s, he approached comedy with an unexpected sense of burlesque: Mafia Blues (1999), My stepfather and me (2000), My stepfather, my parents and me (2004)… He often plays his hard man’s image to better deconstruct it.
A man of cinema, in the broad sense
Robert de Niro is not just an actor. He is also producer and director. In 1989, he founded Tribeca Productions, then created in 2002 the Tribeca Film Festival to revitalize the south of Manhattan after September 11. He realizes Once upon a time the Bronx (1993) and State reasons (2006), two films that explore memory, childhood, power and its ambiguities.
Politically engaged, he openly criticizes Donald Trump, defends civil rights, supports persecuted artists. His commitment exceeds the screen. It makes cinema a resistance tool.
Cannes 2025: recognition, but also an arrest
The presence of Robert de Niro on the stage of the Grand Theater Lumière will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of Cannes 2025. And the next day, an exceptional master class, in the Debussy room, will allow festival -goers (at least, those who will have the chance to win a ticket!) To hear the voice of a free, daring, sometimes provocative, but always deeply cinephile.
But this palm of gold of honor, if deserved, also invites a broader questioning. Since its official creation in 2002, this distinction has been mainly given to Western men, often American. For what ?
An too western-centered distinction?
Looking at it more closely, the list of recipients of the Palme d’Or of Honor in the past two decades reflects a largely Western vision of cinema. From Woody Allen in 2002 to Clint Eastwood in 2009, from Bernardo Bertolucci in 2011 to Marco Bellocchio in 2021, the honored figures belong to a cinematographic pantheon focused on the United States and Western Europe. Recent years are no exception to this logic: Jodie Foster in 2021Forest Whitaker in 2022, Meryl Streep in 2024and Robert de Niro in 2025. Only the Japanese studio Ghibli, also honored in 2024, comes to briefly break this hegemony.
Out of fifteen individual distinctions given since 2002, twelve are men and all come from the United States or Western Europe. No personality from Indian, Arab, Asian, African or South American cinema has been distinguished. An absence that questions, especially at a time when these cinemas abound with recognized talents and major works.
We can make the same remark with regard to the Palms of Honor of Interpretation, awarded exclusively to French actors and an American actress.
The absence of a Satyajit Ray, of a Souleymane Cissé, a Shabana Azmi, an Aamir Khan, an Ahmed Zaki, an Omar Sharif, an Ousmane Sembène or an Abbas Kiarostami in this list questions. Global cinema is not limited to Hollywood and Europe!
India, the second world producer of films, has never seen one of its big actors or distinguished directors. No more than the Arab world, including the cinemas of Egypt, Lebanon or the Maghreb offer powerful works and praised in international festivals.
Towards a widening of the gaze?
Cannes likes to present itself as the window of world cinema. It is time for this ambition to be reflected in its honorary distinctions. The recognition of an emblematic figure like Robert de Niro is indisputable. But she can – she must – cohabit with a desire for more assertive diversity.
The golden palm of honor of tomorrow could become a gesture of openness, an invitation to celebrate other faces, other stories, other cinema geographies. The world is vast, the talents countless.
Robert de Niro, and after?
By honoring Robert de Niro, Cannes pays tribute to a prodigious career, to an actor who has become a myth. But this celebration does not prevent asking an essential question: what does this reward for our vision of world cinema says? And how to expand it?
Cannes, because it is a place of prestige and history, also carries a responsibility: that of being up to cinema in all its forms, all its languages, all its cultures. As such, the Palme d’Or of Honor could become more than a tribute: a manifesto of universal recognition.
As Robert de Niro says: ” Cannes brings us together: storytellers, filmmakers, admirers and friends. It is still necessary that all the storytellers of the world are truly invited to the party.
Neïla Driss
