As the 74^th edition of the Cannes Film Festival gets underway, the view is very different from all the decades when the hustle and bustle started at least a week before the opening. It is truly a new era, a not quite post-pandemic one. After all the Palais des Festival served as a hospital location at the beginning of the pandemic and turned into a mass vaccination site earlier this year. But movies are back and so is the town. According to local records, Cannes has a higher vaccination rate for its residents than most other areas in the South of France. Much depends on this year’s fest, above all the economy for the less than 75,000 locals. After the 2020 festival was postponed and later canceled, Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure vowed to bring it back with a bang.

That also means that Cannes will not have a virtual section – either you are there in person or you will miss out on discovering the next cinematic gem or international award winner (the last full edition launched Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite into orbit). There will be a mask requirement but no empty spaces between screening attendees and premiere guests. All theaters will work at full capacity. There are safety measures in place, of course: attendees have to show either proof of vaccination or take a PCR test every other day. Says Frémaux: “Vaccination is not mandatory, but testing is. Spectators can choose to present either a vaccination certificate or a negative test. Basically, to access the Palais, people will have to present a valid health pass to enter the screenings. The validity of the pass is acquired via either a complete vaccination course, or immunity acquired more than 15 days and less than 6 months ago, or a negative PCR or antibodies test within a 48-hour window.”

And for actors and filmmakers who have secretly wondered about the French custom of a bisou on each cheek in the past, not to worry: Cannes’ artistic director will forego the usual greeting of his famous guests on the top of the red carpet-steps this year. No kissing allowed. France, like most of Europe, has eased up on COVID-restrictions this last month but there is still worry about the mutating virus and not all filmmakers are able to make the trip due to the restrictions in their own countries.

What we will see are films that are as varied in their subject matter as in pre-pandemic years, more first-time directors and more females than Cannes has ever had before, even if the number (four in the main competition:  Mia Hanson-Love, Ildiko Enyedi, Julia Ducournau, Catherine Corsini) falls short of most other big festivals.

Twenty-four films are competing for the coveted Palme d’Or this year (although some movies carried over from the canceled 2020 fest, like Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch). Among these are Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria starring a very creepy Tilda Swinton, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, Sean Penn’s Flag Day, Sean Baker’s Red Rocket and new films from Jacques Audiard, Francois Ozon, Nanni Moretti, Cannes enfant terrible Joachim Trier, Asghar Farhadi and even Paul Verhoeven.

The female filmmaker quota looks better in the coveted Un Certain Regard section with Gessica Généus, Tatiana Huezo, Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova, Teodora Ana Mihai, Kira Kovalenko and Hafsia Herzi competing.

Spike Lee, already scheduled to head the main jury in 2020, will do the honors this year being the first Black person to do so, and with his face even gracing the official Cannes 2021 poster. Under his tutelage, Senegalese director Mati Diop, Canadian singer/songwriter Mylène Farmer, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, Austrian director Jessica Hausner, French actress Melanie Laurent, Brazilian director and producer Kleber Mendoça Filho and South Korean actor Song Kang-Ho will decide the top awards. British filmmaker Andrea Arnold heads the Un Certain Regard jury. And no worries, there will be star power on the Croisette: as Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver sing and dance their way through Annette by Leon Carax, Matt Damon stars in Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater and Oliver Stone presents his new documentary JFK, there won’t be a lack of glamour. Plus, there will be Jodie Foster receiving her lifetime achievement award from the festival that she first visited as the 13-year-old star of Taxi Driver.

What we won’t see are publicity stunts like giant blowup dolls of some animation characters or of Howard Stern wanting attention for his Private Parts, Borat-inspired camel rides down the Croisette, parachuting emojis, fake sharks appearing in the Mediterranean behind Blake Lively, or Jerry Seinfeld descending from the clouds dressed as a bee to promote – you guessed it – his Bee Movie. And maybe that is a good thing. It will be a treat to see one of the world’s top three festivals return to its original mission of celebrating the art of cinema. Not to mention headlines dedicated to the creators behind the worthy film fare instead of being stolen by tacky PR-stunts for movies that are merely made for blockbuster value, not Palme d’Or.