Major Security Measures at the Cannes Film Festival

Six months after the attacks in Paris and the full state of emergency, the Cannes Film Festival will be held in maximum security conditions

Still, the major security measures will be kept discrete, not to affect the great feast of film, reports AFP on Thursday.

French Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who will inspect the security measures just before the start of the festival on May 11, promised that the event will be held in the highest possible level of safety in the context of the terrorist threat. For the 2016 edition, Mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, mentioned that additional control measures, in particular random checks in all districts will be taken.

For the police to be prepared for the worst case scenario, in late April a simulated attack was held in Cannes, which included the explosion of a car bomb in front of a school, followed by the entrance of four terrorists inside the theater of Palais des festivals, where there were 180 people. The exercise allowed the detection of breaches in coordination, said deputy Philippe Castanet.

With a city constituting an international tourist destination, with 2 million visitors annually, the Cannes City Hall decided to draw up a plan to prevent terrorist risk, the first in France, according to the mayor. Four experts, including a former Israeli counter-terrorism chief, have already done an audit to analyze vulnerabilities in the defense of the city.

During the festival, the city's population can even be tripled, reaching approximately 210,000 people. During this period there is recorded an increase in the number of juvenile offenders that come and become a danger in the Côte d'Azur. They sometimes even eclipse the stars and VIPs with spectacular jewelry disappearances cases, as the one in the edition of 2013, or the theft of 17.5 million euros from a Cartier store on the Croisette just before the 2015 festival.