Cannes is in France. Is this a big surprise? Besides, who besides critics, who know nothing about films that real people want to watch, goes to it?
I'm pretty sure that I have never seen a film that was aired at the Cannes film festival.
Actually you get a lot of tourists, students and people who don't have work attending - tickets are easily available for purchas to attend the vast majority of the films shown - tickets are only restricted for what are considered to be really big potential winners (and even then - a little 'sugar' goes a long way). The REAL restriction is on the parties (except for reasonable looking females with few moral concerns). Many years ago I attended a showing of a movie about the Hollywood 'blacklist' - the movie was reasonably well-acted but nearly fact-free fantasy - BUT since it was so clearly anti-American it got a REALLY big standing ovation.
This was also when I found out Robert de Niro was SOOOO short!!
My husband is in the industry (he's a Conservative to the bone, BTW). I've had the misfortune of seen some Cannes films...all of them sucked.
No, it's expected.