HOW TO CANNES

MAY 2025: BONUS ISSUE

Bonjour, friends!

For more than a week, I've been in France at the Cannes Film Festival, which is the biggest annual gathering of the international film industry in the world! This year, 40,000 people were accredited for the film festival and film market, which take place in parallel along the French Riviera. The main competition this year features 21 films and includes new films from Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Spike Lee, Kelly Reichardt, and Joachim Trier. But there are SO many more films and sections! Lili Koss, a first-time director from Bulgaria (and a friend of mine from Berlin) debuted her tender coming-of-age short film, Eraserhead in a Knitted Shopping Bag, in the Critic's Week section; actresses Kristin Stewart and Scarlett Johansson both premiered films in a section called Un Certain Regard, but to much less acclaim than Lili, whose film was a mad, raving, exuberant success!

If you're anything like the extremely drunk British "girl trip" girls I met in the bathroom one night, you might not have any idea what the Cannes Film Festival is or why/when/where it's happening, so below I'll give you the lay of the land at what my producer Jenny calls "the world's biggest adult summer camp for film nerds" -- Cannes!

WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW?

Behind the grand red carpet entrance (where all of the competition films premiere) is a giant cinema that fills the front of the building where the Marche du Film takes place. Two or three times per day, the red carpet comes alive with celebrities, as fans placed outside the partition with photographers clamour for photos. There are also a number of famous faces rolled onto tarps lining the seemingly endless construction sites along the main boulevard, La Croisette, which I always find a quite charming contrast to the hiding excavators.

I spoke with an unknown producer who had been at a premiere. A celebrity she knew asked her to take a red carpet photo with him, but the person announcing the red carpet walkers didn't know her name, so he announced her as "SOMEBODY" for the Getty Images credit. How glamorous!

The premiere cinema building is a huge, four-story monstrosity of pretty bland, windowless architecture. If not for the celebs, it would just look like an ugly brutalist conference center. Inside is no different. The rest of the building is taken up by a windowless trade show floor teasingly called "The Riviera," where workaday sales agents meet distributors and set up screenings in a dozen tiny cinema rooms to try to sell unknown films (and sometimes even competition films) to buyers. And all along the beach, white tents and national flags populate the International Village, where the free-flowing espresso caffeinates national film board employees and small-time producers striking deals and dealing in meetings cementing international co-productions and new friendships.

So at Cannes, there's a place for everyone.

If you want to read about what the day-to-day of Cannes is like, I wrote a story about that last year for Thrillist, and you can read it here.

THE TIME BEFORE NOW

I prep for Cannes by previewing the list of attendees on a website that is like an oldschool phone directory for film people: your picture, your company, your phone number, your email address. Once you register for the Marche du Film, your name is automatically put on the site with an "@Cannes" badge, so all of your summer camp friends can find you. After looking through thousands of names, researching what these people do and if their companies seem like a good fit, I'll contact them and ask for a meeting.

"I have a film your company might be interested in distributing" ; "I'm looking for funding for a project" ; "I'm an actor and a big fan of your work" ; "You look really cool and I want to be your friend" -- these are all acceptable reasons to contact a Cannes attendee, sending your email out into the universe and hoping for a response, a meeting time, and a face-to-face speed date with someone you hope will become a collaborator. Want to meet somebody from A24? Pitch to Lionsgate? Go to the Working Title yacht party? Score an invite to the exclusive Locarno cocktail hour? It all starts with this list.

It can be really intimidating to think about pitching your project or yourself, and everybody worries (at least to some extent) about what to wear that will make an impression. It should be the perfect combination of unique style, business-ready, weather-appropriate, and French chic. Oh, and don't forget the comfortable shoes, because no matter the footwear, your feet will be killing you at the end!

Scroll down to see how Lili, the director I mentioned above, conquered this challenge!

NOW, FOR THE STORIES...

The best thing about Film Nerd Summer Camp is that everyone is truly a character. Each person comes from some kind of life (who cares, really) but has cultivated their personality, explored their interests, mined their past for storytelling gems, and ultimately, become the eclectic, one-of-a-kind character of their own Fellini film. Truly. A few of the standout ones I met:

• A writer-director I've known for over a decade told me she's never been to the Cannes Film Festival, but she comes to Cannes every year (she lives in London) for the yacht festival because she just loves yachts. She dresses the part, acts like a billionaire, and contacts yacht owners for tours of their vessels, pretending to be a buyer. (And of course making up excuses about each yacht's deficiencies when she ultimately decides "not to buy this year.")

• A hip Londoner named Jimmy told us his mother had an affair with Jimmy Hendrix and he wondered for a long time if he was an illegitimate child of the guitar idol; but when he finally pressed his mom about the dates of the affair, they don't (seem to) add up. I remain unconvinced that this Jimmy is not the son of THE Jimmy.

• Eva Longoria appeared at a very exclusive talk honoring young female producers, and a new friend invited me, Jenny, and Hannah to come (and sneak our way in) under the name of a reporter. It turned out, the reporter wasn't on the list, but Jenny dutifully pretended to be her assistant (she almost had me convinced, honestly!) and made fake phone calls and texts to her, all while Hannah chatted in French to charm the door staff and I just remained aloof and polite until they finally let us inside.

• A Toronto-based producer (and former PR agent) with the most iconic laugh explained to me that her ex-lover introduced her to an Italian guy who offered her to stay in his home in Sicily while he's away. She followed up on the one-hour conversation and realized the man's house was in Palermo, which of course prompted me to tell her to watch season 2 of The White Lotus before making a decision to go. She didn't, and she's there right now in a remote corner of Sicily, where she doesn't speak the language and knows no one. Let's hope she's ok!

• A film critic I met several festivals ago adopted a co-host on his podcast, and the two of them got into every premiere, walking the streets afterwards to capture audience reactions. The co-host asked a question at Spike Lee's post-screening press conference: "How many games will it take for the Knicks to win the playoffs?" which started a viral moment and a backlash from a French journalist who was uninterested in the NBA. I can't embed it, but you should check it out!

• Attended a party during which a French guy mimed instructions for cutting a pastry at us. At first I thought he wasn't talking because it was loud, but it turned out, that was just his thing: miming. Eventually I had to take a video because it was just too good.

• Lili, the friend whose film premiered at the festival, hired a stylist to dress her for the festival and she came as the most bombastic, brilliant, and elevated version of herself I have ever seen: a true queen with clothes to match her personality. Imagine oversized, bedazzled suits with stunningly tinted glasses and a few ruffles thrown in for good measure! (Actually, you don't have to. She's pictured below!)

• Jenny rented us an apartment, which we shared with the co-directors of a short film Jenny produced, which was accepted to the Cannes Short Film Corner. The directors, in their early 20s and complete festival newbies, had the charms of the festival ferries from moment one. They met Gael Garcia Bernal at a party on the first night and were roused from sleep at 1am on the second night to get on a YACHT PARTY! By day three, they were flying high, and pretty much festival veterans.

FINALLY, FOR THE BUSINESS

So, does anything get accomplished in Cannes, besides summer camp fun?

After three years, I've really started to internalize what it means that the film industry is "a relationship business." Cultivating the friendships with people you want in your industry circle is the first step to creating a lasting career. Some of the people I met three years ago are now prominent, and will eventually end up on festival selection committees, as executives and agents, and power-player producers. Because of my festival network, I'm watching summer camp friends shoot movies in Bali, premiere their films in Berlin, crack the illusive Telluride premiere, and gather festival darling films into their distribution network. And of course there are some more concrete outcomes, too.

Jenny and I got three script requests for our project and a "Letter of Interest" promise from a friend in distribution who I've known for six years. Friend-of-friend intros, goodwill, and having the market savvy of a veteran pave the way! Each year, we add new folks to festival group chats and cultivate these networks of mutual support in a way I didn't think really existed in the entertainment business.

The value of the film market in Cannes in cumulative, and no effort is wasted. While the fruits of our efforts this year won't be seen immediately, our investor friend Bruno put it well: we're planting seeds, spreading them along the path, and nurturing them along. Eventually, we'll see which ones grow.

That's it, until next time!

Emily

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