Forest Whitaker Says Cannes Was Where He Was “Acknowledged as an Artist for the First Time Internationally”

It’s been 34 years since Forest Whitaker first arrived in Cannes with Clint Eastwood’s Charlie Parker biopic Bird, a film that would win him the best actor award.

Since then, the Oscar winner has been back to the festival numerous times, bringing three more films to the official competition in Bill Duke’s A Rage in Harlem, Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

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This year, he returns, not just as a producer of Christophe Castagne and Thomas Sametin’s South Sudan-set documentary For the Sake of Peace, but as the recipient of the honorary Palme d’Or.

Speaking at the press conference on the opening day of the festival, Whitaker looked back fondly on his debut trip to the Croisette.

“When I first came to Cannes, I was acknowledged as an artist for the first time internationally,” he said, adding that he was “just a kid” and hadn’t been to a film festival before. “I didn’t know how to respond.”

Whitaker said that he hadn’t even considered the possibility of winning an award in 1988. “I was just blown away for being invited and for the experience.”

34 years and countless films and accolades since that first experience on the Croisette, Whitaker is now set to star in Francis Ford Coppola’s $100 million Megalopolis, the Godfather director’s first feature in more than a decade and a film that has reportedly been in the works for 20 years.

Offering up a few morsels of information about the secretive project, Whitaker said he had a “not insubstantial” role in the film, which he added “deals with the city and the power structures within it infighting for power, one progressive and one conservative.”

In addition, he said that the film — which also stars Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel and Jon Voight — would start shooting in August.

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