“You have to be prepared for what we consider a multi-terror event,” said city security consultant Nitzan Nuriel.
With 200 extras on hand and fake car bombs going off, it could have been a film shoot. Instead, the city of Cannes Thursday morning conducted a simulation of coordinated terror attacks designed to test emergency responders ahead of the annual film festival next month.
The fake explosion rocked the city’s Palais and was followed by four armed terrorists forcing their way up the Palais’ grand entrance, where the red carpet will be rolled out in just three weeks. Local schools also participated, with security drills that would come into play in case of a terror attack.
The extras were lying “injured” in red vests along the Croisette and splayed across the steps of the Palais.
The simulations were the first of their kind, put in place to test out the city’s new security protocols following the Charlie Hebdo attacks last January and the Le Bataclan attacks in November in Paris.
“I only found out we might be in danger when I saw that video,” says one industry veteran after Cannes staged a fake terror attack to test its security readiness ahead of next month’s festival.
With the world’s biggest film festival only a few weeks away, Cannes made a very public show of force. Last Thursday, the city on the Cote d’Azur staged a dramatic, some would say chilling, test run of what might happen if terrorists target the stars, film industry execs and thousands of fans who descend on the Croisette every year.
A video of the exercise, which featured masked gunmen with machine guns storming the famed red-carpeted steps of the Cannes Palais as shots rang out, played on repeat on French television and circulated widely on the internet.
The purpose, according to Palais president Claire-Anne Reix, was to show fest attendees “that we are training, that we are preparing, that we are ready. It’s not frightening. What should be frightening is all the videos you see on the internet, not the coverage of an exercise.”
But for many heading to Cannes, the images of gunfights between police and men in balaclavas and the sound of (fake) car bombs exploding was anything but reassuring.
“I only found out we might be in danger when I saw that video — I wasn’t thinking about it until then,” said Yuhka Matoi, an international sales exec for Japan’s Tokyo Broadcasting System. “Maybe I’ll stay away from the red carpet [this year].”
Cannes Faces Backlash Over Chilling Terrorist Simulation Video