Everything I Spent at the Cannes Film Festival as an Indie Filmmaker

Day 2 – Friday

Total cost: €44 ($47.76)
On the first festival morning, I donned my power outfit: a rust-colored sleeveless silk blouse and matching jacket, with gold and black leopard-print trousers. Jenny and I marched up the peninsula between docked yachts, a palm tree-lined sidewalk, and construction barriers featuring celebrities. The walk along the sidewalk above the beach was like a peek behind the festival curtain. Big delivery trucks docked on the main street, La Croisette, next to temporary restaurants set up along the beach. Their drivers wheeled crates of liquor back and forth as garbage trucks collected last night’s glass bottles.

I had done research on thousands of participants and scheduled wall-to-wall meetings, but I had one minor hitch: My five-year-old phone was nearing its planned obsolescence and often refused to connect to maps and emails. Problems of a technical nature were on the horizon.

Jenny and I picked up our festival badges and walked through security to the campus of the Marché du Film. Outside of the market hall, the festival campus’ International Village was filled with pop-up tents, where each country’s film commission hosted meetings and networking. Inside, the market hall was packed with booths showcasing films, production equipment, and location tax incentives.

After a few impromptu meetings, the day continued off-campus at a lunch meet-up for Women in Film and Television International (WIFTI). We opted for a quick hummus and pita bread snack for €17 ($18.45) before returning to the boardwalk and taking our first meeting at a beachside lounge rebranded for the festival as the Microsoft Cafe.

Around 3 pm, open-bar happy hours started popping off at the International Village. From the sidewalk entry, there’s a guestlist for each tent—but on the beach side, each flows into the next, and nobody knows if you were invited to Greece or Spain, or nowhere at all. I met up with Derya, a Turkish filmmaker friend, at the UK Pavilion for a glass or two of rosé, then headed to the gourmet cheese table at the Estonian Pavilion. We tried to slip into the beach-side of the German Pavilion, but they had some pretty dedicated bouncers, who kicked us to the sidewalk. Derya announced she had an invite (which she did), and the door-woman nodded her in, so I announced I had an invite too (I didn’t) and walked confidently in behind her.

For dinner, I had recruited a few Berlin friends to meet at a pizzeria a few blocks away. We were joined by a film critic known as the Schmear Hunter. The waitress, a local who understandably resented the festival and all of us faux-monied posers, scowled predictably at our table’s requests. I tipped anyway, bringing my dinner total to €27 ($29.31).

One of my dinner companions invited us to continue the party with him at the lobby bar of the Hotel Majestic to meet the investor who had just agreed to finance his film. We arrived at a table of Americans plucked from a cartoon: a scowling producer leaning on his cane, surrounded by glammed-up power couples drinking their third round of Moscow Mules from copper mugs. Cocktails were €25 each. Jenny and I sat down and ordered espresso martinis while my director-friend talked to his new investor, who wore sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, a floor-length brown monk’s robe, and no shoes. Jenny and I finished our drinks and put them on the table’s tab before walking back to our hotel. My new Parisian sandals rubbed my ankles raw as I walked—so much for comfortable shoes.