Cannes is shorthand for the Festival de Cannes, the film festival held each May on the French Riviera, where premieres, prizes and evening dress meet at the top of a famous staircase. It was conceived as an alternative to a Venice festival dominated by Fascist politics and was due to open on 1 September 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland; it was called off after a single screening and finally began in September 1946. The top prize, the Palme d’Or, arrived in 1955, named after the palms along the Croisette.
The red carpet has its own statistics: 24 steps up to the Palais des Festivals and about 60 metres of carpet, changed three times a day. Exceptions to the dress code are rare, but in 1953 Pablo Picasso was allowed in wearing a sheepskin coat. In 2018 the festival director discouraged red-carpet selfies, while admitting he could not actually ban them.