Longest standing ovation at Cannes lasted 22 minutes; was for a low-budget film that made $55 million in DVD sales
This 2006 film made on a shoestring budget received a 22-minute standing ovation at Cannes, the longest in the festival's history.
Every year at the Cannes Film Festival, the measure of feedback to a good film changes from critics' stars to the time that the audience spends applauding it. Headlines mentioning 7-minute or 9-minute standing ovations for films at Cannes are common, and it is a tradition that has existed for decades now. So much so that there are established records about films that have received the longest standing ovations in the film festival's history.
The longest standing ovation in Cannes history
In 2006, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro arrived at Cannes to premiere his new film, El laberinto del fauno, also known in the English-speaking world as Pan's Labyrinth. The dark fantasy film was made on a small budget of $14 million and described a young girl's escapist fantasies in the middle of World War II. Pan's Labyrinth received a rapturous reception at Cannes, with the crowd applauding it for 22 minutes straight at its premiere.
In 2015, in an interview with GQ, del Toro described his initial reaction to that never-ending applause. “It’s hard to describe what it is, to go that long, because the first three, four minutes, you're bathed in a sort of realm of acceptance and joy. Ten minutes in, you don’t know what to do,” Del Toro said. “You're just smiling and nodding. And in the middle of that, Alfonso Cuarón, who was next to me, gave me a strong pat on the back and he said, ‘Allow yourself to be loved, man.’ And then I just opened myself up to that ovation, and it went for the full 22 minutes. And it was only when they opened the doors of the Palais to let people out, that it started subsiding.”
All about Pan's Labyrinth
Starring Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones, and Ariadna Gil, Pan's Labyrinth followed up this critical acclaim with commercial success too. The film grossed $84 million worldwide, way beyond its production budget. It was also one of the best-selling films on home entertainment, grossing $55 million just from DVD sales in the US. Pan's Labyrinth won three Oscars and a host of other awards, with Metacritic calling it "the best reviewed film of the decade" in 2010. It has been named in several lists of the best 100 films of all time.
What's the deal with Cannes' standing ovation times?
What started as something novel later became tradition and is now just pageantry. Many have called the long standing ovations at Cannes a sort of mob mentality. Others have called it one-upmanship. But as one attendee chirped a few years ago: 'Do you want to stop clapping before Christopher Nolan does?' That peer pressure keeps the applause going, and the headlines churning. The record for 2025 is a 'pedestrian' 9 minutes so far. Clearly, this edition of Cannes needs to do better.
