Weeks before arriving in Cannes for my first Cannes Film Festival experience, I understood that sleep was going to be off the table. The festival (which this year returned to a traditional, in-person event for the first time in two years) had implemented a new online ticketing system to avoid day-of lines. Bookings opened at 7am French local time, four days in advance of screenings. Since I was in New York City pre-departure, this meant setting a daily 1am alarm to make sure that I could snag the highly coveted seats!

And then there were all of the event invites I was getting: a boat party here, a charity cocktail affair there … I mean, seriously, was Cannes even a real place where journalists went to work? As I shopped for evening wear (a necessity as I’d just spent the last two years almost exclusively in PJs) and confirmed event after event, I was starting to feel… fancy.

Upon arrival, I devolved into a sweaty American tourist. Screenings are spread all over the town, with some being a good 30-minute ride by bus or taxi (if you could secure one) away from others, and the French cinema names on our tickets didn’t always mesh with what Google maps thought was happening. And nothing could have prepared me for the sheer number of people on the ground. The masses that spilled out of the theaters, restaurants, and shops reminded me of Times Square when the Backstreet Boys were on Total Request Live. After a few days, I got used to being swept off my feet by the force and direction of crowd swells.

There were a few movies that I was going to beg or plead my way into no matter what, even if I hadn’t been able to secure a ticket pre-festival. Most of these films were by established directors making small comebacks like David Cronenberg, Alex Garland, and Baz Luhrmann and, in all honesty, I was a bit underwhelmed with most of the projects. The real fun of the festival was to be had finding new faces and voices to follow. I was blown away by films like Harka (for which Adam Bessa jointly won Un Certain Regard’s best performance competition, alongside Corsage’s Vicki Krieps), Broker (for which Song Kang Ho won Best Actor) and Plan 75 (which received a Camera d’Or Special Mention).

The only big-name film that I thought lived up to its hype was Top Gun: Maverick, which I got to see on my birthday. Seeing the movie and the Tom Cruise tribute that preceded it,  was the best gift, as I saw my life of going to the movies flash before my eyes. As the film ended and the theater erupted in applause, I remembered why I got into this business in the first place: my love of art and quality entertainment.

The food and Champagne (my God, the Champagne!) in Cannes were as exquisite as I knew they’d be. I’d lived in Paris briefly years back, so I knew exactly what to buy at Monoprix (France’s upscale Target) and how to dine like a queen on a budget on the rare occasions that I wasn’t fed at events. And when I was busy filing stories, I lived vicariously through all of the bar and restaurant patrons right outside my window, enjoying the unseasonably hot and humid weather and each other’s company, through the wee hours of the morning. Their chatter lulled me to sleep after midnight screenings at the beach, and the smell of warm, rising croissant dough from nearby cafes would wake me in the mornings before early screenings.

One of the best parts of my Cannes experience was meeting other Hollywood Foreign Press Association members. I imagine that this type of party- and network-driven festival would be very difficult without some sort of community. Luckily, I’d been in virtual contact with many members since I joined the organization in October of 2021. (Last year was the first time that the HFPA accepted members residing outside of Southern California so this was the first, in-person, HFPA-heavy event I could attend.) It was thrilling to meet the people I’d been voting alongside for the last Golden Globes. We all come from so many different countries, perspectives, and walks of life, and spotting the faces that I knew from WhatsApp photos and from HFPA Zoom calls became as much fun as spotting the actual Hollywood celebrities hanging out around the Palais.

Factoring in the sweat, frizz, confusion, lack of sleep, and insufferable crowds, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat! The Cannes Film Festival is a very special event that nurtures creativity, nerdiness (it’s a cinephile’s dream), and vanity, while giving festival goers a noteworthy look at the best of modern film, as well as an unforgettable taste of the French Riviera.