As far as film festivals go, it doesn’t get more glamorous than Cannes.

The sprawling red carpet along the croisette, the banks of photographers in their tuxedos, those soaring steps leading up to the main venue… Few red carpets provide as much fodder for a photo opportunity as Cannes. It’s why gaggles of supermodels descend on the French Riviera every year to attend the premieres of tiny Taiwanese art films they probably won’t even see. A glamorous picture at Cannes can send you global.

And yet the film festival has struggled with what that glitz and that glamour means in the modern era. Cannes has always had a strict dress code – at few festivals, for example, are the paparazzi photographers asked to wear tuxedos to merely cover the red carpet – but in 2015 they made headlines for turning a group of women away because they were wearing flats. The festival chief responded to the furore, saying that there was nothing in the official dress code prohibiting flat shoes. And yet the festival’s security guards did not allow these women to enter because they were not deemed ‘glamorous’ or dressed up enough in their flat shoes. Whatever that means.

Cannes 2019: why is the film festival still banning women from wearing flats on the red carpet?