A women stripped off her clothes after crashing the Cannes red carpet, but before you joke, “Well, yeah, Idris Elba was there,” she did it for a very serious cause. According to reports, the activist was seeking to support Ukraine and shine a spotlight on alleged war crimes being committed against women by Russian forces. However, she didn’t make it far, as security guards quickly removed her from the red carpet where Elba and co-star Tilda Swinton were premiering their new film, Three Thousand Years of Longing.
Via IndieWire:
An unidentified woman, who appeared to be wearing a shirt that said “scum” on the back, burst onto the scene and began screaming at the top of her lungs.
The woman reportedly removed all of her clothing and collapsed to her knees before security guards promptly removed her from the premiere. She appeared to be wearing yellow and blue body paint in the colors of the Ukrainian flag with, according to one observer, the words “stop raping us” written across her abdomen.
Due to the swiftness of the Cannes security team, there’s very little footage of the woman’s protest, but New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan managed to tweet a very brief clip and confirm the disruption.
“On the Cannes red carpet for George Miller’s new movie, the woman in front of me stripped off all her clothes (covered in body paint) and fell to her knees screaming in front of photographers,” Buchanan tweeted. “Cannes authorities rushed over, covered her in a coat, & blocked my camera from filming.”
Buchanan continued his thread with updates, but the commotion appeared to be short-lived as Miller and the film stars continued down the red carpet as if nothing had happened.
— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) May 20, 2022