The most arresting moment of the Cannes Film Festival so far was not a premiere or a press conference but a midnight screening of a quarter-century-old action film. Vin Diesel, the star and producer of the Fast & Furious franchise, stood before the audience in the Grand Théâtre Lumière after a restored print of the first movie had finished rolling. His voice cracked as he said: “I hope that in your lives you can have a brother like Paul.” He then turned to embrace Meadow Walker, the 17-year-old daughter of his late co-star Paul Walker, who had been seated nearby. The gesture drew four minutes of sustained applause from a crowd that included Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, Diesel’s fellow original cast members.

The tribute took place as part of the Cannes Classic section, which this year devoted a special evening to the film that launched a billion-dollar global franchise. Italian media noted the symbolic weight of the reunion on the Croisette, with Diesel wearing a black jacket embroidered with the saga’s logo in Swarovski crystals, while French coverage emphasised the heritage aspect — the selection of a Hollywood blockbuster for a programme usually reserved for restored classics. Viewing the event from Madrid, commentators observed that Diesel’s arrival had been a welcome dose of Hollywood star power at a festival from which the American industry has recently been keeping its distance.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise’s backstory, the emotion was grounded in a real-life tragedy. Paul Walker, who played the undercover policeman Brian O’Conner in the first six instalments, died in a car crash in November 2013 at the age of forty. Meadow, his only child, was then just fifteen. Diesel recounted on stage that Walker had told him of her birth in the middle of filming one of the early movies. “Now she is the same age her father was when she was born,” one Spanish report noted. Across the Atlantic, analysts in London pointed out that the franchise had struggled to find a narrative way to honour Walker after his death, eventually retiring his character rather than recasting him.

Looking ahead, the spectacle at Cannes raises questions about the future of the series. The tenth instalment, Fast X, was released three years ago, and an eleventh is in development. Yet the emotional core of the saga — the brotherhood between Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and Walker’s O’Conner — is irreplaceable. The festival’s decision to programme the anniversary screening in a prime midnight slot also reflects a broader shift in Cannes’ relationship with popular cinema, moving beyond the traditional art-house fare to embrace the cultural pull of a franchise that has grossed over seven billion dollars worldwide. For the moment, though, the enduring image from Cannes is not a car chase but an embrace — one that, for a few minutes, reunited a fictional family with the ghost of its past.