Eight years after leading a historic women's march at the Cannes Film Festival, two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett returned to the red carpet with a message: The #MeToo movement, which once promised to transform the industry, was silenced before achieving real change.

It was on May 17, 2026, during a conversation with Didier Allouch at the festival's annual edition, that Blanchett reflected on what she perceives as an abrupt end to the social movement that gained momentum in 2017 following the allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

“There are many people with platforms who can speak with relative safety and say: ‘This has happened to me,’ and the supposedly average woman on the street says: ‘Me too.’ Why is that silenced?” questioned the actress, as reported by Variety. And he added:

"What the movement revealed is a systemic layer of abuse, not just in this industry, but in all, and if a problem is not identified, it cannot be solved" Cate Blanchett

Blanchett's return to Cannes cannot be understood without remembering her starring role in 2018, the first festival after the explosion of the Weinstein case.

The movement in Cannes

Back then, as president of the jury, she led a protest alongside Kristen Stewart, Ava DuVernay and 79 other women in film. They climbed the stairs of the Festival Palace to denounce gender inequality, pointing out that in the history of the festival, 1,866 male directors had participated compared to only 82 women.

At the time, Blanchett stated: "We expect our institutions to promote parity and transparency in their executive bodies and provide safe work environments. We expect our governments to ensure compliance with equal pay for equal work laws. We demand that our workplaces be diverse and equitable so that they best reflect the world in which we live."

And he concluded that speech with a phrase that resonated strongly: "The stairs of our industry must be accessible to everyone. Let's move forward!"

Eight years later, however, Blanchett laments the lack of real progress. “I still work in movie studios and I do the headcount every day; every morning there are 10 women and 75 men,” as Variety reported.