Oscar winner and Polish film auteur, producer, writer and actor Roman Polanski said that Video on Demand services are not a threat to cinema. When asked about the festival’s most talked-about issue, Netflix, Polanski replied, “I don’t think it’s a basic threat to cinema. People will go to the movies not because of better sound or projection or better seats than in their home, but will go to cinema to participate in the experience with those around them.”
“People like to experience things and spectacle together. I think that’s the main reason they go to the cinema. It’s a very different experience to see Borat alone rather than a laughing audience,” he added.
The celebrated director also talked about ghost-writers and fantasy versus reality.
“I think the reason is the bombardment of information,” he said. “You have never been so surrounded by information, reality, pictures of life around you. What is new is that this picture that could have served as a reference is becoming false. You cannot rely on photography as a document of the truth. Before you could say this is a photo and this really happened, but now you can cheat within minutes and send it to an unlimited number of people,” Polanski replied when he was asked why he thinks people can’t live in reality today.
However, Polanski’s thriller Based on a True Story, which revolves around the life of a woman who tries to become the part of a famous author’s life, starring Eva Green and his real-life wife Emmanuelle Seigner, is playing out of competition in Cannes.
The director’s first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film. He has received five more Oscar nominations since then, along with two BAFTAs, four Cesars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d’Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France.
Polanski’s 2013 venture, Venus in Fur, also premièred in Cannes and ended up winning Polanski the Cesar as the best director for the film.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
