A rainy Friday afternoon in Cannes got disrupted briefly by a suspicious bag left near the main entrance of the film festival headquarters, the Palais des Festivals.
According to local news and eyewitness reports on social media, police closed the main entrance and secured the area while they investigated the bag but they did not evacuate any of the offices or high-profile screening rooms inside. France’s La Libre reported that the bag was discovered at approximately 1:30 p.m. in front of a tourist office.
It turned out it was “baggage forgotten by a tourist,” said Philippe Loos, secretary general of the prefecture. The inspection ended 30 minutes later, by which time police had identified the contents and allowed traffic to resume in the area.
At the time, Holly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex was screening in the Debussy Theatre, while Nuri Blige Ceylan’s About Dry Grass was about to begin at the Grand Theatre Lumiere. Harrison Ford, James Mangold and the team from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had wrapped up their press conference, which followed last night’s world premiere.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to festival officials. According to a source on-site at the Cannes market, there were no evacuations inside.
