 The Man from London premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, Tarr's first film to do so. Although its showing was highly anticipated, the slow pace and prolonged shots of the film "had the press fleeing like panicked slaughterhouse cattle" as The New York Times put it, and it won no prize. This failure was attributed by the film's French distributor Shellac to its late showing and the poor quality of the dubbing. A proposal for the film to open the Hungarian Film Week out of competition had previously been rejected by the festival's board. Following its Cannes appearance, the film was screened at the film festivals of Toronto, Melbourne, Edinburgh, Split, Vancouver and New York. It proved controversial in New York, where elements of the audience reacted favourably when the film appeared to end prematurely due to a technical fault; others greeted the actual conclusion with fervent applause and calls of bravo.
