A major power cut across southern France left around 160,000 homes without electricity on Saturday and impacted the town of Cannes, which is currently hosting its annual international film festival.
The power outage began at around 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), France’s electricity transmission network RTE said in a post on X, adding that teams are working to restore power as quickly as possible.
“We are looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately,” a spokesperson for the French national gendarmerie told Reuters. No arrests have yet been made in relation to the power outage, the spokesperson added.
Saturday is the last day of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which has been held in the town for 78 years, with the closing ceremony scheduled to take place in the evening.
The festival is using generators to ensure that screenings are still able to go ahead, French public broadcaster FranceInfo reported.
The Palais des Festivals, where Cannes’ main events take place, has “switched to an independent power supply, allowing all scheduled events and screenings, including the closing ceremony, to proceed as planned and under normal conditions,” the festival said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Organizers of the festival told CNN affiliate BFMTV that there are “no worries” that the power outage will affect the closing ceremony, which will see the winners of the festival’s top prizes announced.
The outage affected two screenings on Saturday morning for about five minutes, then they resumed, the organizers said, according to BFMTV.
This story has been updated.
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