Matt Damon got emotional being back in a movie theatre.

The actor was there at the premiere of his new movie, 'Stillwater' at the Cannes Film Festival, and he admits he was overcome with emotion as he sat down with guests to preview the film for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic.

A video from inside the theatre showed him and the cast receiving a standing ovation for five minutes as he got emotional at seeing so many people packed into the theatre again.

And later asked by Variety what made him cry, he said: "the feeling of being in a movie theatre again and how much I missed that, and why we do that".

He added: "It was a great reminder that we need to go as a community of strangers and turn the lights off and have this experience all at the same time together. There’s something beautiful and valuable about that. I just kind of got overwhelmed in the moment because I just hadn’t done that in almost two years. It was great. I was happy. I was just very moved by it."

Matt had previously revealed how he got into the mindset of playing an absentee father in the movie.

Speaking about spending time with the American roughnecks to work on his character, he said: "They were wary at first because these are the kind of guys that Hollywood movies look down their nose at a lot of the time. They were like, 'What are your intentions? You say you want to play [a] roughneck. What kind of movie are you making here?' I think that once they saw the script and they talked to Tom and to me, they realised that our intentions were pure and that we were really trying to get it right. And then they could not have been more helpful."