“It’s like a scene from The Square directed by Mia Hansen-Løve.” Our Digital Editor Kitty Grady gives a rundown of her first few days on the Croisette.
Wednesday 14th May
My Cannes Film Festival doesn’t begin on the day I arrive, but five days before, when the ticket booking opens for the 14th May. Having done my first Cannes in 2024, I know the drill, but I don’t feel confident. Wake up at 5.55 and count down the seconds, and try not to fumble anything. The whole process, which I’d argue is the filmic equivalent of getting Glastonbury tickets, is done in seconds, but the adrenaline leaves me unable to fall back to sleep.
On 14th I am at Gatwick airport with my colleagues Chris Cotonou (our Deputy Editor) and Luke Georgiades (our Features Writer) sitting on the floor outside our gate. There were important goods to secure by way of Julia Ducuronau’s Alpha. Ducuronau of course took home the Palme in 2022 for Titane, and has already been snapped up by Neon, a distributor known as a ‘Palme d’or whisperer’ after backing previous winners such as Anora, Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall as well as Titane. Could Ducuronau take the Palme home again?
Observing her success with securing tickets on Instagram, I looked to the film journalist and A Rabbit’s Foot contributor Iana Murray for advice. Her hack—open the tabs the night before. Merely log in, and refresh them—was so staggeringly simple I almost missed the challenge of raw-dogging ctrl+f to find films individually (as Luke put it).
Landing at Nice Airport there is a carnival atmosphere—paparazzi and taxi drivers holding cards with ridiculous names. The flight from Newark, which arrives with ours, is filled with very New York-looking movie people. One of them, with spiky hair and square dark glasses, reminds us of Justin Theroux’s director in Mulholland Drive. We drive to Juan Les Pins—an area just outside of Antibes and not too far from Cannes—it’s where F.Scott Fitzgerald stayed with Zelda, and Bar Fitzgerald is a monument to his drinking.
On the train from Juan les Pins to Antibes the sense of circus continues—a Japanese woman with a selfie stick live streams a news broadcast in the jostling carriage. It’s like a scene from The Square directed by Mia Hansen-Løve. I drop off a copy of our 11th Issue to Fred L’Écailler, where Charles Finch, our editor-in-chief, hosts his annual filmmaker’s dinner. It’s on a square next to a boules pitch and Fred—a real character—makes me stage a photo shoot with him, putting his red beanie onto the issue.
I have a Coca-Cola granita at Kiosk 3—of all the Cannes kiosks, Chris is adamant that this is the best for the region’s Pan Bagnat. Walking down to pick up my accreditation, I spot Molly Manning Walker dressed in black shorts on the Croisette. Manning Walker, who A Rabbit’s Foot interviewed about her feature debut How to Have Sex, is this year’s jury head for Un Certain Regard.
Parthenopi—a great Greek restaurant is where Chris, Luke and Issy Carr (film producer at Rabbit’s Foot Films) go for dinner. We then get a shuttle bus to Cineum for the IMAX premiere of Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. Tom Cruise—having been spotted on top of the BFI IMAX in London earlier in the week, was sadly nowhere to be seen at Cineum, despite the security walking around and the delay in start time (they were contractually not allowed to start before the premiere down at the Grand Théâtre Lumière). Luke has reviewed the film, writing that it “chokes on the admirable but misplaced ambition with which it moves through its nearly three-hour runtime”. The first Mission Impossible film I’ve seen, it might also be my last.
Thursday 15th May
I get up early. It’s a big day as we are launching our double feature with Harris Dickinson and Frank Dillane. Dickinson’s directorial debut Urchin is premièring as part of Un Certain Regard, the festival’s strand for young and up-and-coming talent. It is an ambitious first film, which follows a young homeless man Mike (Dillane). We spent a sunny afternoon a week before Cannes shooting them both in East London. It’s where the film also has its genesis, but on such a hot sunny day, it also felt decidedly Riviera.
I head into Cannes from Juan Les Pins on the train—a group of bemused British women on a hen do joke about doing the red carpet in their pink sashes. I head towards Le Majestic, one of the hotels along the Croisette. I’m there to meet Bill Kramer and Meredith Shea. Kramer is the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Shea is their Chief Membership, Impact and Industry Officer and tell me about the exciting projects they have in store. We reminisce about this years Oscars which in effect started at last year’s Cannes. Our team were lucky enough to see Sean Baker’s Anora in Cannes last year, for me on the last day in Cineum, Cannes’ slightly less glamorous cinema. Tired and under the weather, the film blew me away, and we knew we had to get Baker and Mikey for our cover last autumn. Cannes has become an Oscar predictor of late, with Parasite, The Substance and Emilia Perez among the key titles from last year.
In the afternoon, Chris and I head to the Five Seas Hotel where the Marrkech Film Festival are hosting their Cannes party. It’s a glamorous but friendly affair—like Marrakech Film Festival itself. A Rabbit’s Foot have been covering the festival, which is headed up by Melita Toscan du Palmier, for a couple of years now. Chris swears he spots Tilda Swinton by the pool, but I don’t see her myself. We do bump into Lina Soualem, whose second film Bye Bye Tiberias we covered on the website. Her sister is in a film in competition, La Grande Dernière showing at the Grand Théâtre Lumière that night. We follow up the event with a ham and cheese crepe.
In the evening I go and see Sirat with my film PR friend Charlotte, which is in competition, directed by Oliver Laxe. The logline—a rave road movie about a man looking for his daughter—does not at all prepare me for the nihilism and utter devastation of the film, which is one of the highest rated of the festival so far. As tired as I am, by the time it ends, I am fully awake. We meet up with Rabbit’s Foot Films Issy Carr, who has bagged herself a ticket for the covetable MUBI party on the Croisette. As we approach the MUBI party—walking past the Magnum beach where Charli XCX is hosting an after party—La Bionda’s One for You (of The Brutalist fame is blasting out). When she gets in, I try to get in too, with recourse to only a small amount of demeaning tactics, to no avail. When I realise she isn’t coming back, I head home.
Friday 16th May
It’s the day of our Issue 11 launch—which is taking place that night at the aforementioned Fred L’Écailler—the famous fish restaurant which is an institution of Cannes. Charles has been hosting his dinners there for years, and Chris wrote a brilliant feature about Fred in Issue 11 of the magazine.
First though, there’s time for a film. I always try to delve into films in Un Certain Regard, often finding it’s where a lot of the magic happens in Cannes—the new discoveries and quirkier titles. Last year there was Guan Hu’s excellent Black Dog, which took home the Prix Un Certain Regard, as well as French cheese farming comedy Vingt-Deux by Louise Courvoisier (which played particularly well to the home audience), Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s Armand, which featured a 7-minute laughing scene from Renate Reinsve. I started off this year with The Plague, by Charlie Polinger (who also turned up to the A Rabbit’s Foot dinner), and am completely obsessed with it. It’s a Lord of the Flies scenario about boys at a Water Polo camp in 2003 America and you can read my review here. I discovered on Letterboxd afterwards that Charli XCX (who has been all over Cannes this year) was in my screening, and felt validated when she also gave it 5 stars.
The dinner kicked off at 8pm, with drinks by the boules pitches and live music from the legendary Gypsy Kings. Star of The Phoenician Scheme Benicio Del Toro was our guest of honour (and our Issue 11 cover star). With Robert De Niro there, he turned his acceptance speech (Charles gets a silver rabbit’s pin made for each honoree), Del Toro turned towards his hero, “I went in to do my first reading with De Niro,” he said. “I had two lines, and he had four lines. And he took out his line, and then he scratched my line, and then he scratched his line, and then he scratched my line. I said, ‘well, now I don’t have any lines.’ He said, ‘it’s gonna be better.’ I took that to heart and made a career out of saying nothing.”
