Cannes is one of the "Big Three" major European film festivals, alongside Venice and Berlin , as well as one of the "Big Five" major international film festivals, alongside Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in when Jean Zay , the French Minister of National Education , on the proposal of high-ranking official and historian Philippe Erlanger and film journalist Robert Favre Le Bret decided to set up an international cinematographic festival.
They found the support of the Americans and the British. Its creation can be largely attributed to the French desire to compete with the Venice Film Festival , which at the time was the only international film festival and had shown a lack of impartiality with its fascist bias during those years.
The last straw was in the event when Mussolini and Adolf Hitler respectively overruled the jury's decision in order to award the Coppa Mussolini Mussolini Cup for the Best Film to Italian war film Luciano Serra, Pilot , produced under the supervision of Mussolini's son, and the Coppa Mussolini for the Best Foreign Film to Olympia , a German documentary film about the Berlin Summer Olympics produced in association with the Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda despite the fact that the regulations at that time prohibited awarding a documentary.
Outraged by the decision and as a measure of protest, the French, British, and American jury members decided to withdraw from the festival with the intention of not returning.
Thus, on 31 May , the city of Cannes was finally selected as the location for the festival over Biarritz and the town hall along with the French government signed the International Film Festival's official birth certificate with the name of Le Festival International du Film.
