As Hollywood’s finest gather at Cannes Film Festival this week, the event’s strangest phenomenon – and greatest overindulgence – has been making headlines: the standing ovation.

The French Riviera event breeds longer standing ovations than any typical night at London’s West End. In part, this is because, after the screening finishes at each world premiere, a camera swoops in on the cast and crew in attendance, and projects their faces onto the enormous Palais screen. Ovations perhaps only continue for so long because of the camera feed – each time its lens homes in on another star of the film, there are renewed claps and cheers.

The standing ovation has become such a part of the festival’s glittering fabric that people whip out stop-watches (or their phones) to record how long they last.

The longest in the event’s history is thought to have been for Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 fantasy-horror Pan’s Labyrinth.

At the film’s premiere, the audience stood, thwacking their hands together and swooning, for a total of 22 minutes. That’s the length of most sitcom episodes.