You might be asking: How does a tour guide in Provence get to walk the red carpet in Cannes?
I came to the Cannes Film Festival 2023 already experienced and sort of a veteran. My friends made advanced zooms with me so that I could guide them on how to crack and maximize the precious and crazy time in Cannes. Indeed, time is precious.
Everything during festival time is expensive. Hotels, Air B&B, restaurants, everything. And time is indeed insane and fleeting. I always had the feeling that I was missing out on something better. Wherever I was and whatever I did, I always felt that there was a better place to be, with louder, more influential people. It’s called FOMO or fear of missing out.
Indeed in Cannes there is a perpetual fomo.
Pretty and semi-fancy backpackers
This year we were already a healthy group of all kinds of screenwriters, directors, actors, and others on the fringes of the industry. We met in a Facebook group and migrated to WhatsApp. From there it was a short way to a “real” meeting in an Irish pub on the first night of the festival. And with flowing beers, everyone is nice, cheerful and optimistic. Everyone applauds, takes pictures and promises that they will read my script and put me in touch with someone.
The beautiful young actress who is wooing me to give her the lead role. The Brit who has not produced any film and decided a year ago to call himself a producer after he got tired of investment banking. Various journalists who have already seen everything and were fed up before it even started. And I, I look at the clock.
The famous Irish pub 
The Bold & the Beautiful
The Johnny Depp opener
I got a ticket for a late screening of the Johnny Depp movie. This should be his comeback. I have to run to my tiny room and turn myself into a black swan if I want to walk the red carpet. So I refused the tempting offer to eat pizza and walked to my studio with a beautiful sunset accompanying me.
Exactly an hour later and I meet up with a German I met at the pub. He was jubilant and happy that we could go to the movie together because he also has a ticket. Only he forgot to tell me (or maybe simply forgot) that he is actually the plus-one of a journalist of thick proportions. I was received by them with not so welcoming looks as we advance the line to the red carpet. Anyway, the movie was bad and I fell asleep halfway through. What have you done Mr. Depp?! The German and his date stayed to watch the credits (a nice way to get rid of me) and I ran off to my room at 2am completely exhausted.
We used to be a bunch of restless travellers in South America or India. Today we are unfulfilled backpackers sporting business cards with QR codes.
Just to be clear: I do not have a business card with a QR code.
The shower and the toilet is the same thing
But this year I’m smarter. I booked a studio at Air B&B 10 months in advance. I swore I’d find a place to live within walking distance of the Palais du Festival. No more busing at 2am. Indeed that’s what it was. I found a studio within walking distance of about a kilometre from the famous theatre. A tiny studio for all 11 days and nights, all included for 700 euros. Really the deal of the decade.
However, when I checked in I realised I was in a storage unit that had been converted into a studio. The window opens to garbage bins. And you can go to the toilet and take a shower at the same time because this is a “bathroom” is for dwarfs. Well, well, what do I care? I’m alone and hardly in the room. What is important is that the WiFi works well. I need to order (or compete for) tickets to screenings, tweet on WhatsApp, look for parties, and send materials about my projects to random people I met.
So much to do and no time
The days passed in total chaos. Morning screening. Participating in interesting panels. Or a meeting with some producer or influencer. Another screening. Sometimes a networking event at the Israeli or American or Swedish pavilion…. In the evening while I’m at screenings or galas, WhatsApp beeps with secret details about various parties. But how do I get in without an invite? That is heart of the matter.
It took me back to the happy days in Goa where the name of the game was to find the party….
Terrified on the red carpet because selfies are not allowed! 
Lines to enter screenings
But I have no energy for such games. After all, I’m not 25, or even 30. I prefer to end the evening at the Mondrian pub (a 5-star hotel). That’s where everyone is. All the strange creatures who sell something they don’t have. Everyone has an idea or a project, but only I have a script. I understand fairly quickly that the serious people must have gone to sleep a long time ago. And here only the rich drunkards remained. So much money is poured here on hotel rooms, meals, clothing and pretty girls that I could have produced a small film on such a budget.
Fatigue setting in
My friend got infected with a virus at one of the parties and is very sick. She spent the second half of the festival in her bed at the Chateau of Napoules. But I continue my way. I’m tired of pubs and all kinds of industrious fake creatures. Just tired of talking about myself and selling my stories and their many characters. I’m actually tired of talking. After all, I write alone, in a world I invent, where I spend time only with the characters I choose to bring to life on the page. I’m like God. And like God, with unbearable ease I elect to banish all the “as if” people from my life in Cannes. And so I run away to the place I love the most. Where the best films in the world are screened (at least according to Cannes).
The Lumiere Theater
There is nothing like the world’s largest dark room for movie screenings – the 2300-seat Lumiere Theater. And that’s where I disappear and absorb Japanese, Turkish, British, North African films… I chose well, I have a good sense, and the films inspire me and push me to excellence. What writing, what direction, plot. And this is where the strength of the festival actually lies – the films. The creators spit blood to get here and I worship them, folding at the end of the screening and running back to my room, almost ashamed. What have I done so far? After all, this is cinema!!
And always always, shoulder to shoulder, at screenings you meet interesting people. A producer who writes a film like mine and wants to read the script (absolutely not!). A cute Iranian guy (maybe in another life…). A photographer whose film was accepted to Cannes (and mine was not…).
My favorite film in the festival. Nuri rules. 
Excellent must-see documentary
And then came the kids. What to do with them in Cannes?!
Suddenly from feeling like a movie star and Cinderella, I returned to being a mother to a son and a daughter aged 12 and 10. I’m divorced and this is my week with the kids and my ex-husband can no longer host them. So what to do? Pull them out of school and bring them to Cannes? Yes! I informed the teachers, signed the paperwork, and everyone was so amazed – as if I myself was a filmmaker being screened by the festival.
Now three crowd into the storage-unit-studio. My children of course did not have a badge for the festival and could not enter the complex. But still we walked around, took pictures, sat in restaurants like everyone else, and were part of the thing. And at night, thanks to them, I went for the first time to the “cinema on the beach” which is open to the general public. We grabbed lounge chairs, wrapped ourselves in the blankets they lent and watched the strange French movie that was being shown. Until, as in many French films – all kinds of body parts that children usually don’t see started popping up…
We folded up and returned to the storage unit.
Cinema de la Plage open to the public 
Walking like Egyptians in Cannes
When they returned to school, everyone was jealous. Maybe it’s really impressive to get a badge for the Cannes Film Festival? I met a number of industry folks who were not accredited and it got me thinking…thanks Cannes!
Closing ceremony
To my amazement I managed to get a ticket to the closing ceremony where all the Palme d’Or awards are presented. But what, I don’t have my studio anymore because I had to check out. After all, I did not imagine that I would get a tix to the closing ceremony. There’s no choice and no bed to sleep in. I will have to drive back home (about two hours) in the dark night after the ceremony.
But that’s a problem for another time. Let’s not spoil the atmosphere.
Today is no longer raining and it’s actually very hot. And I’m homeless with a car. I have two more screenings before the ceremony. Two movies I really want to see. Which means I have to put on my evening gown at noon. Homeless, I changed clothes in the bathroom on the beach and rushed to the screening because the sun was beating down on me and my long black dress.
Yet, in Cannes, the time flies towards 7 in the evening and I hurry to stand in line for the ceremony. The red carpet blows up with photographers. Fans and curious people surround the Palais from all directions. It is broadcast live on TV and must start on time. I feel on top of the whole world!
The gate is opened, the music starts, and I’m walking the red carpet, climbing the famous steps. I don’t have a movie here and I’m nothing, but at this moment I’m so proud of myself for coming this far. And behind me a host of stars and VIPs. Once inside the theater, I take a seat and watch the live feed from the red carpet projected on the screen.
The Turkish actress won 
Daniela and Tarantino
Me, Tarantino and Danielle Pik
And here is the stunning Orlando Bloom, and the chic from Desperate Housewives, and Jamie from Game of Thrones, and the team of the Turkish film I loved, and the Japanese team, and British director for The Zone of Interest. And I have a pinch in my heart because the film about the Holocaust is excellent, but I wrote about the same topic already in 2017. Yet lacking connections of course, it didn’t go anywhere despite the awards and praise the script received. Well, so what?
They stop the red carpet machine for Tarantino and his Israeli wife Danielle Pik who steals the show. And she looks radiant after having two children. If only I could say hello to him one day. Daniela climbs the steps and shakes hands with the president of the festival, Iris. If only I had such in roads, maybe my short film would have been accepted? And maybe not. Maybe it just sucks?
They enter the hall and I’m above them in the stands up high. The ceremony begins, the awards are distributed, I have seen most of the films because I have good taste, we already said. Tarantino opens up and says whatever he wants while awarding the Grand Prix to the film about the Holocaust. And for dessert Jane Fonda launches the Palme d’Or winner (Anatomy of a Fall) her award certificate at her back. Will Smith’s version of “The Slap” at the Cannes Film Festival…
It’s already late and I won’t stay for the closing film. I go out, smoke, and make my long way to Palm Beach where my Peugeot patiently awaits me for the long way home.
View from inside the Palais to the red carpet bonanza 
Jamie the hunk from GOT
Screenwriting
So what am I writing about anyway?
I have many projects and over the years I realised that the historical dramas about the Holocaust or about my grandmother in Yemen will not see the light of day any time soon.
So, like any beginning director, I decided to climb down from the high mountain I was on and write a low-budget film with a chance of actual production. The movie is called ANALOG ANDROIDS. On the face of it, it’s a romantic, sweeping crime narrative. But actually it’s a love song for the newly shafted generation.
I came from the X-generation, as we were called. And like all my peers I stood on the side, shrugged my shoulders, and said so what?
Millennials have not yet learned the art of “so what?” because they have been over-hyped by a digital world.
So that’s what my film is about.
If you happen to be in Cannes in May during the festival, come with me on the tour 🙂
Everything you heard is true. Even very true.
