David Lynch attending the seventieth annual Cannes Movie Pageant in 2017
Ki Worth/Getty Photos
David Lynch had a storied historical past with the Cannes Film Festival. In 1990, the visionary director earned the distinguished honor of profitable the Palme d’Or for Wild at Coronary heart. Simply over a decade later, he was introduced with the award for Greatest Director for Mulholland Drive in 2001. The next yr, he appeared on the movie competition as jury president. Lynch’s presence was felt as totally as his absence at Cannes 2025 as his son, Riley Lynch, spoke on the premiere of the documentary Welcome to Lynchland.
“This competition meant so much to my dad,” Riley mentioned. “It’s a really emotional time.” Directed by Stéphane Ghe, Welcome to Lynchland was accomplished previous to Lynch’s death in January from cardiac arrest attributable to persistent obstructive pulmonary illness. The filmmaker seems within the documentary alongside featured company Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, and Isabella Rossellini. The characteristic launch spans Lynch’s celebrated filmography, together with Twin Peaks, Eraserhead, and Mulholland Drive.
“With an unwavering dedication to his inventive imaginative and prescient and freedom, David Lynch, an artist fascinated by essentially the most deviant depths of the human soul, has composed his oeuvre like a riddle to decipher, on the cusp between goals and actuality,” a synopsis of Welcome to Lynchland reads. “In revisiting each the filmmaker’s life and his work, this documentary will probe his inventive course of and plumb the hidden which means of an implacably constant filmography.”
Final yr, Lynch shared an replace about his well being on X by which he revealed that he developed emphysema from years of smoking. Nonetheless, he punctuated the put up with a hopeful promise: “I’m full of happiness, and I’ll by no means retire.” The director had extra to provide, however left behind a permanent legacy for each his followers and his household. At Cannes, Riley went again greater than 20 years in time to recall the time he tagged alongside together with his father to spend his birthday on the movie competition. “I had my tenth birthday right here,” he mentioned, “Sharon Stone introduced out the cake.”
From Rolling Stone US.