Festivals

The pace has picked up - this is the home stretch towards the coveted Palme D'Or and all the other awards. Equally, if not more important, is nabbing a distributor for your film, to ensure that the work will live on beyond the confines of the Croisette.

The sun came out and smiled: Cannes was dominated by women, even if for a moment. As the 69th edition of the festival comes to a pivot point - the halfway mark, the critical first weekend when trends and favorites begin to pop up - one title was on everybody's lips: American Honey, a long (162 minutes), dazzling exploration of millenial angst on the roads of America, served straight up from the mind of director Andrea Arnold, a two-twice Jury Prize winner in Cannes.

Cannes begs the question: what to do with your hair when the ocean is a seashell throw away? To add to the challenge, opening day at Cannes produced showers mere hours before the opening gala. For the most part hair was worn in a ‘just up from the beach’ way.

Like the Supreme Court, Cannes juries are composed of nine experts, although by the shroud of secrecy that surrounds their proceedings sometimes they can appear more like a sequestered jury than a festival panel. This years judges are Arnaud Desplechin, Kirsten Dunst, Valeria Golino, Mads Mikkelsen, László Nemes, Vanessa Paradis, Katayoon Shahabi and Donald Sutherland headed by Aussie, Golden Globe nominated director George Miller who was on the Croisette last year with his Mad Max: Fury Road.

By the time the weekend comes along, the transfiguration of Cannes is complete. Hardline cinephiles don't like to hear it, but by then the lovely town has indeed become a mini-Hollywood with even more expensive food; in other words, a place where someone dressed as an enormous, fluffy creature can walk around and nobody would bat an eyelash - but photographers will swarm to take his/her picture.

Parties are Cannes’ unique language, and the HFPA speaks it very well – and with a purpose. On Friday, May 13, the Association threw a cocktail party at the glamorous Nikki Beach of the Carlton Hotel, on the Croisette, to benefit and honor FilmAid International.

Cannes opened to rain filled skies and plenty of star power.

By this stage Cannes 2016, like most of its predecessors, has settled into a routine - a fine balance between art, commerce, gossip and controversy. The market, which started even before the opening night of the competition, is buzzing- this is where film projects hope to raise funds and find distributors.

Cannes is not only competition and cinephiles. As Hollywood-on-the-Riviera it’s also one of the world's foremost film markets and a giant springboard for Hollywood movies.

Back in Cannes like she had done so many times before - all the way back to 1976 and Taxi Driver - Jodie Foster took the Palais by storm with her latest directorial project, Money Monster. Screening out of competition, the engaging, politically aware thriller - much in the vein of Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, per Foster's own take- brought the usually jaded gala audience to their feet with several minutes of warm applause.