Cannes Juror Slams Hollywood for Blacklisting Sarandon

Paul Laverty didn’t leave Cannes’ jury press conference quietly. The screenwriter and longtime Ken Loach collaborator saved his sharpest words for last — calling out Hollywood directly for blacklisting Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, and Mark Ruffalo over their opposition to the war in Gaza.

“Can I just leave one tiny thing?” Laverty said, wrapping up the conference. “The Cannes Film Festival has a wonderful poster. Yes, and isn’t it fascinating to see some of them like Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo blacklisted because of their views in opposing the murder of women and children in Gaza? Shame on Hollywood people who do that. My respect and total solidarity to them. They’re the best of us, I look up to them.”

He then added, with a dark edge of humor: “I just hope we don’t get bombed now, because we’ve got this poster in Cannes.”

The timing carries real weight. This year’s official Cannes poster features the iconic image from Thelma & Louise — the 1991 film that made Sarandon a star — making Laverty’s defense of her all the more pointed. The poster has drawn its own controversy: French gender-parity group Le Collectif 50/50 criticized it as “feminism washing,” noting that only five of the 22 competition films come from female directors.

What Sarandon Said About Being Shut Out

Sarandon’s situation became public in February when she spoke at the 40th Goya Awards in Spain, where she was receiving the International Goya award for career achievement. She was direct about what happened.

“I was fired by my agency, specifically for marching and speaking out about Gaza, for asking for a ceasefire,” she said. “It became impossible for me to even be on television. I don’t know lately if it’s changed. I couldn’t do any major film or anything connected with Hollywood.”

She’s continued working — just not in Hollywood. “I found agents ultimately in England and in Italy, and I work there. I just did a film in Italy, and I did a play at the Old Vic for a number of months,” she said. The reach of the blacklist, though, extended beyond American borders: “I know this Italian director that just hired me — he was told not to hire me, so that’s still recently. He didn’t listen, but they had that conversation.”

Her current reality, as she described it: “Right now, I kind of specialize in tiny films with directors who have never directed, in independent films.”

It’s a striking place for an Oscar winner to find herself. And Laverty wasn’t having it.

A Jury Conference That Got Political Fast

Laverty set the tone early in the press conference, before the Gaza comments even landed. He quoted King Lear — “Tis’ the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind” — and described Cannes as something close to a refuge.

“Especially in these times now, in these really dark times… you see so much violence and systematic violence, genocide in Gaza,” he said. “The idea of coming to a festival — which is a celebration of diversity, imagination, tenderness — when there’s such vulgar, vicious, systematic violence? Where there’ll be contradiction and nuance and beauty and inspiration? It knocked me out.”

Laverty isn’t new to politically charged filmmaking. As the writer behind films like I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You with director Ken Loach, he’s spent decades telling stories about systems that crush ordinary people. His remarks at Cannes felt entirely in character.

The broader context matters too. Last year, on the eve of Cannes, more than 350 film industry figures — including Sarandon, Ruffalo, Bardem, and Richard Gere — signed an open letter condemning what they called the industry’s “silence” over the deadly impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The letter made headlines. The blacklisting, apparently, followed.

The jury Laverty is part of is one of the more eclectic in recent memory. Park Chan-wook leads the group, with Demi Moore, Chloe Zhao, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel, Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes, and actor Isaach de Bankolé rounding it out. Whether Laverty’s comments reflect the jury’s collective mood or just his own isn’t clear — but nobody at the table moved to stop him.

“They’re the best of us,” he said of the blacklisted actors. For Sarandon, Bardem, and Ruffalo, it may be the most public defense they’ve gotten from inside a major film institution yet.