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A group of feminist protesters interrupted the premiere of film Holy Spider with smoke devices and staged a scene highlighting the feminicide — killing of women strictly because they're female — in France at Cannes 2022.

According to Variety, roughly 12 women in formal attire gathered on the famed stairs of the Palace of Festivals and Congresses of Cannes with raised fists on Sunday and filled the space with thick black smoke. They held a long banner with a list the names of 129 women which, according to the group, highlighted 129 feminicides in France since the last Cannes festival.

Security did not make an effort to put a stop to the ruckus and allowed the protesters to be filmed and photographed by the global press. A source revealed that the protest took place before the cast and filmmakers of Holy Spider arrived. They added that the caravan of vehicles bringing them to Cannes was intercepted briefly before arriving at the top of the red carpet.

Another insider shared that the protest was not a coordinated stunt to promote Ali Abbasi’s female-centred thriller which is about a journalist who travels to the holy city of Mashhad in Iran to investigate a serial killer targeting sex workers. On the contrary, according to the website Challenges, it was linked to the documentary Riposte instead, which is about feminist activists.

Cannes seems to be the popular venue of choice for feminist protesters to make a statement because this was not a first. On Friday, an activist who was attending the world premiere of George Miller’s 3000 Years of Longing pulled a switcheroo when she removed her gown that adhered to the premiere dress code and revealed her abdomen painted with the words 'Stop Raping Us' written atop the colours of the Ukrainian flag.