Professional thieves made off with $1 million worth of jewelry from Swiss jewelry maker, Chopard, during the Cannes Film Festival. According to French authorities, the jewelry was taken from the room of a Chopard employee at the 5 star hotel, the Novotel.
Chopard features designer jewelry worn by many stars at the Oscars. Chopard is one of the sponsors of the Cannes film festival and fulfills requests from the actors and their stylists.Some reports suggest that the jewelry was intended to be worn by celebrities at the Cannes Film Festival, but Chopard said otherwise. Chopard already loaned jewels to Cindy Crawford and Julianne Moore for their red carpet appearances.
"The jewels stolen are not part of the collection of jewels that are worn by actresses during the Cannes Film Festival," Chopard said in statement.
French authorities said the heist may have been an inside job. The hotel room's break-in occurred early Friday at 2:30 AM Cannes local time said authorities. The thieves ripped the safe right out the hotel room's wall. "There must have been either an inside complicity, or people who were in contact with this person and knew that the person had jewels", spokesman from the nearby city of Nice, Cmdr. Bernard Mascarelli said.
Ironically, the theft happened shortly after the screening of The Bling Ring, a movie about young professional thieves targeting celebrity homes in Los Angeles. The movie is directed by Sofia Coppola and is based on actual events about the real-life Bling Ring gang. This crew made headlines for targeting celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
Hilton made a cameo appearance in the movie and was so moved during the screening at the Cannes Film Festival, that she was nearly brought to tears. "I was really emotional watching it. During some parts of it, I literally had tears in my eyes and I wanted to cry. I knew what happened with the burglaries, but I had never actually seen it. These kids were really in my house and did this to me.' It's so violating. It just made me really angry and upset, and when I see these kids, I want to, like, slap them," Hilton said.
Coppola said that she can understand why Hilton was emotional during the screening on The Bling Ring. She said although Hilton's life is public, for someone to go into her home uninvited must be hard to deal with. "She was very complimentary about the movie. But at the same time she was very emotional," Coppola said.
