CANNES, France (AP) — A bomb scare has caused the Cannes Film Festival to briefly evacuate the Debussy theater before the first screening of director Michel Hazanavicius' movie "Redoubtable," a film in competition for the Palme d'Or prize.

Those attending the screening Saturday night were ushered away from the theater in the French Riviera city. Journalists were later told that the suspicious item was found to be not dangerous. After a delay of about 30 minutes, the theater was opened.

The scare prompted several "bomb scare" jokes from critics who didn't care for Hazanavicius' last Cannes entry, the badly reviewed "The Search."

France has been under a state of emergency since 2015, when extremist attacks in Paris left 130 people dead in one night in November.