Festivals - Deauville 2025: Opening ceremony celebrates Pamela Anderson and Splitville

By Mulder, Deauville, Centre international de Deauville, 05 september 2025

The 51st Deauville American Film Festival kicked off on Friday, September 5, 2025, with an opening ceremony at 7 p.m. at the Deauville International Center (CID), an important time and place, as Deauville likes its rituals to be well-timed: the red carpet stretches to the auditorium, the orchestra strikes its first notes, and the room holds its breath as the first speeches begin. The festival itself runs this year from September 5 to 14, a ten-day period that Deauville has perfected over half a century, but the starting signal is always given on the first night.

It is the texture of the ceremony that spectators will remember. Deauville opened with movement, literally, when ballet star Marie-Agnès Gillot took to the stage for a brief, breathtaking performance that created a free and dynamic atmosphere. This moment was not an after-dinner anecdote concocted by advertisers; it can be found in the festival's social media clips and contemporary media coverage, which presented the dance as a kind of invocation, Deauville's way of expressing that American cinema stories live in movement, not just on reels. This same staging, halfway between a coastal ceremony and a Norman cabaret, gave the evening its personality, balancing formal greetings with a theatrical wink. In a year when the selection leans toward first-person risk-taking and independent drive, it seemed fitting that the curtain rose on a moving body rather than a podium. 

Star guest Pamela Anderson didn't just wave from a box before slipping out the side door. Deauville took advantage of the opening night to showcase its Deauville Talent Award, an intentional placement that paired celebrity with creativity, recognizing a career now redefined by recent stage work and a more thoughtful public voice. This context is not fiction: the festival had announced her in advance as the guest of honor, and then mainstream media coverage of the opening night documented the moment as it unfolded, including how the audience received her. The next day, the Deauville ritual continued with the unveiling of Pamela Anderson's nameplate along the Planches, the seaside promenade lined with cabins named after guest artists, emphasizing that the opening ceremony is not a one-off event, but the first step in a narrative arc that spans the entire weekend. In 2025, the narrative arc focused on reinvention and deserved recognition, and the award given to Pamela Anderson anchored this theme.

In terms of programming, the choice of Splitsville revealed a festival that is attuned to its audience. Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin, whose The Climb had already won the Grand Prix at Deauville, presented a new comedy about couple life that plays out like a farce with raw nerves: jealousy, the modern rules of commitment, and the unglamorous logistics of freedom. Deauville listed it in black and white as the opening film in the official documents, and the synopsis, casting, and presence of Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Nicholas Braun, and David Castañeda in the credits signaled a transatlantic bridge: recognizable faces in a film with independent accents. Early reviews during festival week called the choice mischievous, slightly chaotic, an appetizer that dispelled the residual heaviness of the Cannes season with something livelier and more intimate. If opening films reveal the jury's preferences, this one suggested that timing, tempo, and personal risk would carry more weight than sheer scale.

Speech by Philippe Augier

Speech by Motion Picture Association Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin

Speech by Aude Hesbert

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Photos and video: Boris Colletier / Mulderville