For most people in the film industry, or just your average film snob, the Festival de Cannes is seen as the most glamorous of glamour, reddest of red carpets, chicest of European chic, and most famous of celebs- the ultimate film festival. For most people attending, though, there are no red carpets or glamour. There are many screenings, meetings, and a tight schedule. Not that I know from personal experience... Here's my sob story- I'm a film programmer that has never been to a major film festival. Woe is me. Crushed dreams. When will I be given an opportunity to work in my industry?! 😩
Okay, so I didn't go to Cannes this year. But I did, for the third year in a row (pandemic silver linings- we hate to love them), get a pass to the Marché du Film Online. For those of you not familiar with the language of love: marché is French for market(place). And for those of you not familiar with international film festivals: major festivals also have a so-called film market where buyers, distributors, producers, filmmakers, and programmers (that'd be me) meet, network, make deals, and get to watch films that are available for (or are looking for) distribution. To a film programmer, that means finding films that could be booked for a film festival. There may be some films from the Festival's Official Selection, even sometimes in Competition, that are also shown in the marketplace, but it's a real grab bag of films. Some incredible hidden gems can be found but there will also be some Hallmark-esque rom-coms and cringe-worthy action movies also looking for distribution.
That's the gist. And now you're remembering the title of this piece and that I said Online. The Marché du Film Online means that instead of running between screening venues all day every day in the French Riviera, I got to stay in one place- my couch- and get as many films in front of my eyeballs by balancing the online screening schedule. It begins with browsing through the schedule day by day, click on a film, read a little about it, maybe there's a trailer, decide if I want to see it. Most films require an invitation, so I request an invitation with a little message saying I'm a film programmer and wait for an email. Because I won't get to see every film I request, I over-schedule myself and then make schedule decisions day-by-day based on what I can actually watch by then.
If you're not a slut for colour-coded calendars like I am, skip ahead to where I start writing about the films I watched. For the nerds- here's what my week's schedule looked like before it started.
[Insert time-turner joke. ⏳] Overwhelming? Here's my colour code [resisting a rant about why can't Google Calendar let us choose custom colours for events?!]: Purple= pending request, Blue= accepted request, Pink= a second screening (changed to blue or purple or deleted once the first screening had passed).
Each night, I'd look over the options for the next day. I'd eliminate any purples that I couldn't watch. I'd look up the films and change the calendar event to the actual run time. Each screening has a start time but actually a 2-hour window in which I could start watching. So I could shift them around and fit in 5-6 films a day. I'd start by moving the last screening as late as it could go, and work my way back. When I had overlaps, I looked again at each of the films and made some harsh cuts. Anything that was actually in the Official Selection got priority (because they'd presumably be better films). Laurels from other major festivals on the movie poster were also a good indicator. Otherwise, I chose whichever I wanted to see most and/or looked like something we'd want to show at IFFO.
So, this is how my week looked after it was over.
New colour code: Grey= unfinished screening (sometimes it's not great and you gotta move on)
I watched 33 films in seven days (well, eight- but only one on that first day). Yes, that's a lot of movies. (Last year I watched 27, the year before 18.) Yes, they were long days with only brief breaks. What's not included in my calendar is all the time I spent between screenings doing my usual work. I didn't have any can't-miss meetings but I had to keep up with things going on and my usual tasks.
The essentials of a couch-based film festival:
- Noise-cancelling headphones. Never struggle to hear dialogue or adjust the volume mid-movie and block out noisy neighbours.
- Curtains. The glare of the direct sun on white walls makes it difficult to see a dark movie in the afternoon. (Tbh, my white curtains diffuse the light more than block it, but I managed.)
- Snacks. Unfortunately, this was tricky for me because I'm still in my Invisaligns, meaning I can't just pop food in my mouth at any moment. It's a whole todo before and after every time I put anything but water in my mouth. But, as the schedule doesn't leave room for long lunch and dinner breaks, ready-to-eat snacks are essential for fuelling up quickly between screenings.
- Fidget toy. I need to focus and not be tempted to pick up my phone, since I can't look away for a second when most of the films require me to have my eyes on the English subtitles. My favourite is this beaded thing.
Okay, enough complain-bragging about my long gruelling days of watching movies as my job- what did I watch?!
Day 1: Tuesday, May 16
The first and last days of the Marché schedule are light on screenings. There was only one decent-looking film screening on the first day, so it was mostly a regular work day for me with a movie in the afternoon. The Chapel was tagged as a thriller, but it was only mildly thrilling. It was about a pianist competition; piano prodigies stuck in a big house together to isolate while they prepare for their performance. Of course, there were mind games and the heightened emotions of that kind of pressure. My biggest takeaway was that it made me want to play the piano again. It's pretty much my only hobby, playing my keyboard (a hobby in that I do it just to enjoy doing it, I don't make it into a project or set goals like everything else I do), but it's usually in its box in my closet. At the time I thought "When Cannes is over and I have 'free' time again, I'll get it out and start playing regularly" but here it is weeks later and, reader, I do not have 'free' time. Just guilt seeping from the closet, one more thing I should do but don't. And so, my Cannes week began on a musical, if middling, note.
Day 2: Wednesday, May 17
First full day. I rise and shine then flop on the couch with my laptop to check in on work stuff before my first screening at 9:30 am. An uninteresting doc (I Had a Life), an unoriginal story of a teenage girl on vacation having her first sexual experience with the first boy she's ever really liked (Medium), and then I gave up on a three-hour movie (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell) one hour in after a 10+ minute shot that, while always an impressive feat, was so boring I couldn't go on. I gave up other films to fit this three-hour screening into my schedule because it was in Director's Fortnight. At least ending that screening early meant I got a lunch break that day. (Later, I see it won the Camera d'Or award for best first feature. Sorry to this man, but I was not into it.) After lunch, a film I thought would be fun because it had 'fuck' in the title, When Fucking Spring is in the Air, but disappointed when it played into a trope of a pregnant girl reconnecting with parents who abandoned her because carrying an embryo makes you see your own parents differently. Ended the day with another pianist film, 15 Years. This one less thriller, more cheese. But imagine- you're a promising piano prodigy with a punk rocker boyfriend who murders his father but you go to prison for it and 15 years later you're out, trying to live your life, wanting revenge, and find out he's become a fucking pop star so you enter the talent competition TV show he hosts to fuck with him and get the recognition of your talent you deserve. The talent show parts were pretty cheesy, but the revenge plot was visceral. Again, I think- I gotta get back into playing piano. But I just watch an episode of Bones in bed and fall asleep.
Day 3: Thursday, May 18
9:00 am, we kick off with Tiger Stripes, my fave of the Festival. A girl gets her first period and starts turning into a tiger. What more do you need? It's fucking amazing. I want it for my "The Female Gaze" program at IFFO next year but I can only hope it doesn't get wide distribution by then- it won the Grand Prize of La Semaine de la Critique so it's gonna be in high demand. I told my work bestie about it after, stating "I'm in my tiger era." 🐅
My #EmpoweringWomen day continued with Sira. The first of two films about rape pregnancy I'd watch this week. (In case you thought movies were just entertainment- I watched many horrors of the patriarchy and white supremacy this week.) In Burkina Faso (a country I had never heard of before in West Africa), a nomadic tribe is making their way through the desert. The tribe is approached by Islamist terrorists who kill all the men, steal their belongings, and leave the women and children. Sira won't take that lying down, though, and chases and yells at them which makes the leader want to use her as an example; he takes her in his truck, stops in the middle of the desert, throws her out, rapes her, and leaves her to die. She wanders in the desert until she finds some shelter in a little cave. Which just so happens to be right next to the terrorists' base camp. Pros and cons- she can sneak into the camp at night for water and supplies so she can continue to survive but then she's also at high risk of getting caught and a fate worse than death. It's a harrowing story, but in the end, she births her baby that she doesn't want (understandable) and blows up, shoots, and kills all the terrorists. #GrrlPower.
Now, over to Spain to learn about La Singla, once the most famous flamenco dancer in the world, but now forgotten. I thought the format of this doc was too director-focused but it was interesting to learn about this incredible woman who, despite being deaf, was an incredible, passionate dancer, and why she suddenly disappeared from the spotlight. Also from Spain, set in the '50s, I got witchy in Land of Women. More rape, sorry to say it, and empowered women fighting against shitty men. Not with magic magic, the more traditional 'I know herbal remedies and I'm not married so you call me a witch' kind. Finally, something gaaaayyyy with Norwegian Dream. Though it was the ‘closeted guy who rejects the out guy, then comes to love him but still denies him, then eventually comes out, and because they're the only two gay guys around, they will end up together’ trope. Ended the day with Safe Place, an insular story of a mother and brother dealing with their son/brother after a suicide attempt. I thought it handled the subject well with all the nitty-gritty details of such an event- police statements and questioning, the hospital process, and the complicated feelings of knowing your loved one wished (or still wishes) to die. Cheery note to end the day on- but I had no idea of the horrors that awaited me the next day.
Day 4: Friday, May 19
Started with a Chinese movie that I did not vibe with- it seemed to be going in a ‘young woman saves middle age man from boring life’ direction. Because I cut that one off early, I was able to fit in another available screening during that time. Amusia wasn't special; a we-just-met quick romance with the twist being that the beautiful young woman has amusia- a condition that doesn't allow her to hear music. Trauma flashbacks, keeping a secret. Guess what- the hot guy loves her anyway.
Finally, I got some French! As if watching a French film with English subtitles is a replacement for the Duolingo lessons I haven't been doing lately. Unscripted Reunion (I think the original French title is better- Le cours de la vie translates to The Course of Life) is a script-writing seminar in a film. Literally, most of the film is the lead character doing her day-long screenplay masterclass for a group of students at a film school. Her old boyfriend invited her after like 30 years since they'd seen each other. So they've got some baggage to get through on breaks and so do the college students. The class was interesting- what some of the students had to say really added both to her lesson and the plot of the film. There's always that one white guy in a film class who is so sure he's right that he will interrupt the teacher to make sure we all know that he knows how Paul Schrader really came up with the idea for Taxi Driver.
Next up, a dark comedy from Argentina, Let the Dance Begin, about two antagonistic former tango partners on a road trip with their friend, and then their friend's dead body. (Not the last road trip with a dead body I'd see this week!) Then, a dramatic period piece, Measures of Men, where I learned even more horrifying colonial history than I was already aware of, this time about Germany in Southwest Africa in the early 1900s. I quietly cried through pretty much the entire film as I watched white men call Black people inferior because of their skull size, treat them like animals or science experiments instead of intelligent people, and by the end just straight up kill them to collect their skulls for their museum. Though the film showed the atrocities for what they were and never once had me sympathizing with the Germans, it is a story of the Germans' crimes against the people of Southwest Africa told from the perspective of a German, not the Africans. So all it did was made me mad that they did not learn their lesson, as the text at the end of the film told me that this "science" they were making up at the ethnological museum directly led to eugenics and the "science" behind the Nazis' reasoning for their genocides.
After a break for some work and dinner, I moved on to another atrocity; the justice system in modern-day Iran. Seven Winters in Tehran is a documentary following the sentencing of an Iranian woman who defended herself against a rapist and ended up in prison for murder. Iran, or should I say the Islamic Republic of Iran, has this fun thing called "blood revenge" which invokes the classic "an eye for an eye" reasoning. And so, after torturing this woman and threatening to do the same to her little sister, they get a forced confession and she's sentenced to be executed. The court system lays down the verdict or whatever but it's up to the victim's eldest son to decide whether or not to execute her. He wanted her to take back what she said about his father being a rapist but she would not lie, and so after seven years in prison, she was executed. What an end to the day. The world is terrible, it always has been, the patriarchy wins, is there any hope for this fucked up world?
Day 5: Saturday, May 20
Again, my morning began with a film I did not vibe with and stopped watching, despite the promise of it being in the Official Selection. (Why are all the "good" movies boooooring?) So, my day really started with my first Canadian film of the week! I did a whole podcast episode about this genre that I still haven't come up with a good name for but it's my favourite romance genre. The 'stay up all night with a stranger' genre. My favourite is It's Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong. (I swoon at their romantic chemistry.) So I thought Stay the Night, starring Kim's Convenience's Andrea Bang, looked cute. It was kind of cute. It checked all the boxes of the genre. It wasn't a very bad script, they weren't bad performances. My issue is that her big secret is that she's 27 years old and has never had sex. Backing up- her character set up is that she doesn't get a promotion because she's not outgoing and social enough, she says no to going out for drinks with coworkers even though she clearly has a crush on the guy asking her, she doesn't want to go out with her friend, and she wants to be in bed by 9 pm. Sounds familiar! I, too, do not like to go to loud crowded spaces and drink alcohol with people I only know casually from my workplace. I, too, have had doubts cast upon me by superiors at work assuming I can't do something because I don't have the personality for it. I, too, love to be in bed by 9 pm. I, too, had not had sex with another person when I was 27. However, this girl is not happy about her decision to be an introverted early bird. She wants to have sex, she's just waiting for *the right guy* and *the right time*. Barf. So, of course, by the end of the movie we had dissected everything about her timid life that has kept her from experiencing that universally essential, relatable experience of hetero sex so that she can have a one-night stand with the hot hockey player she's been hanging out with all night and say goodbye to him in the morning like thanks for fixing me with your dick, now I have the confidence to talk to cute guys on the bus. She's cured! She's a normal now! Is it now my mission in life to write the ultimate, super-romantic, movie containing the most electrifying chemistry between the hottest couple-not-couple you've ever seen on-screen... About an asexual woman? Yes. Yes, it is.
In The Future, I returned to the Middle East. This time to balance a personal story with a political one. An Israeli woman who predicts terrorism meets with a young Palestinian woman who killed an Israeli Minister of something. While we get to the bottom of what the young woman was really meaning to do, the expert is dealing with her marriage, surrogacy plans, and her mother. This one was really interesting. It's an Israeli production, but it is critical of Israel's actions and sympathetic to Palestinians.
My only American film of Cannes was Fancy Dance, a touching story of Indigenous women's resilience. A woman is taking care of her sister's daughter after her sister disappeared. (If you're blissfully unaware- missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada and the US is an epidemic that the government(s) is not doing enough to help and prevent.) This is not the first film I've seen about a family searching for a missing Indigenous woman, but it's the best. It's a complicated story that lets all of its characters be flawed and redeemable. People make mistakes in their efforts to do what they believe is right. Not everyone gets a happy ending- but they do get to dance. Oh geez, I'm tearing up just recalling the ending. This film is an outstanding example of including an important issue in a film with a strong story, not just building a sob story around a real-life issue.
I rounded off the day with the gays. Light Light Light is a summer romance story between two girls from different sides of the tracks in small-town Finland set against the backdrop of the recent Chernobyl explosion. Another lesbian teen love story that ends in tragedy. And then another romance from Canada. Polarized was basically a Hallmark movie. But gay. And Christian-critical. A classic gay Romeo and Juliet; Christian white farmer girl and Palestinian Muslim agricultural-business girl. The dialogue and general concept are very Hallmark. Which I love to watch with my mom around Christmas but that is not what I come to Cannes for. It got a little too intense when white girl's family physically restrained her so their pastor could exorcise the gay demon out of her... Palestinian girl's family just kick her out for ending her perfect-looking marriage and confessing she is in love with a woman. They end up together but in a chaste Hallmark way where they only kiss. So I ranted to myself about this ridiculous Hallmark-wannabe and then went to bed.
Day 6: Sunday, May 21
Sunday already? By this point, I had no sense of what day it was, except that I didn't have to check my emails and chat Saturday - Monday (holiday) which I got used to and then was annoyed to remember I have a job other than movie-watching on Tuesday. While everyone frolicked about in the nice weather on their long weekend, I was inside in the dark unaware of anything outside of my screening schedule and need for food breaks.
Started with a French film, A Wonderful Girl, which was pretty good but also gave me ‘gross old man with young mentally ill woman’ vibes. It just puts a sour taste in my mouth when I recognize "quirky" and “manic pixie dream girl” characteristics as actually mental illness symptoms. Or even the film explicitly gives her mental illness but still portrays her as cute and quirky because of it.
Back to the Middle East to fret over women's grim, limiting lives. Inshallah a Boy takes place in Jordan and stars an actress that I thought looked like the actress from an Israeli movie I saw years ago and would recommend (In Between) and then later found that it is that actress and her beautiful, beautiful hair. So this harrowing story of patriarchal rules finds a woman suddenly widowed and not allowed to own her own apartment where she lives with her daughter, so she lies about being pregnant, because if she had a son, she would, on behalf of the son, inherit everything from her husband instead of his brother. Have I mentioned how much I just truly hate and disagree with anything that treats people differently based on gender? Religion, laws, the toy aisles at Walmart. There's no such thing as separate but equal so the only solution is no separation. But I digress. The movie was very good and did not end in tears or anger, thankfully.
A comedy to lighten the mood- The Peacock, a German comedy of errors that wasn't really my style but still pretty fun. Then back into some women's trauma! This time in Slovakia. Nightsiren was labelled with horror and thriller but it promised mysterious witches so I was excited. It wasn't really about witches, unfortunately, but about a small village of ignorant superstitious people who call women witches if they do anything out of the ordinary or if they just want someone to blame. It was a really effective story of a woman confronting her past, uncovering secrets, and being unfairly persecuted while she's just trying to get her groove back. More tragedy for women but I enjoyed the dark vibe.
The last two films on my schedule for the day turned out to not have English subtitles! So I basically got an evening "off". You'd think I'd do something screen-less or perhaps use the time to work on this piece about what I was doing, while my memories were fresh, but I'm pretty sure I just watched Bones in bed until I fell asleep again...
Day 7: Monday, May 22
Another 3+ hours long Chinese film that I didn't want to finish and then an Indian film that I watched most of, I wanted to give it a chance, but it was... just not good. So a light morning for me.
A return to oppressed and traumatized women. The second rape pregnancy storyline I had to endure was Sibel's Silence and for the gravity of what "true events" this film was portraying I was disappointed that it wasn't better. Particularly the performance of the young girl at the heart of the film. You know what, I just wrote something out but I just don't even want to describe the horror and frustration of watching a film about a child forced to stay pregnant and give birth. I was... Very upset. And, as I said, it wasn't an overall good enough film to carry the weight of this fucked up situation.
Speaking of abortion! In The Burdened a woman and her husband are trying to get one in Yemen, where it's illegal and a sin, of course. This was a very good story, exploring all the factors in this family's life and their decision and it actually has a happy ending. Well, this one thing goes right for them. They still have their other Yemen-based problems.
I ended the day with a documentary- neither tragic nor very light, but interesting. Apolonia, Apolonia is a long-term portrait of an artist; her life, her home, her friends and family, and of course her art. It didn't rock my world, but I enjoyed a trip into the mind and life of an artist and her journey in the art world.
Day 8: Tuesday, May 23
The final day. We finally made it. By "we" I mean me and my fidget toy. And it started off with a banger. Elaha is about a teenage Kurdish girl living in Germany who is engaged and in need of a hymen reconstruction before her wedding night so that she will bleed and prove her virginity and I cannot even begin and I won't turn this into a rant about how fucked up the concept of female virginity is and how religions use it to control women... I won't rant. I won't. This is a very good film. Really compelling, infuriating, and surprisingly empowering in the end.
A Critic's Week pick, It's Raining in the House, feels quintessentially European indie. Young people, raw performances (the teenage brother and sister are actually brother and sister), dealing with issues of family, poverty, drugs, and class. All the hits. You will probably see this released somewhere soon.
A quick dip into a black & white strange apocalyptic sci-fi world that I wasn't feeling and then another black & white film, but in a less pretentious way. Driving Mum is an Icelandic dark comedy road movie. With a dead body. When his mother dies (natural causes), a man drives her to the town where she wishes to be buried with her body sitting in the back seat. It's got classic road movie mishaps but like, there's a dead body in the back seat, so the comedy is dark but great. The way it wraps up is a perfectly absurd and fitting end to the whole thing. I loved it.
The last film of Cannes! Appropriately titled After Work. I didn't think this would be a good festival pick, but there was nothing else in this time slot and I thought I'd find this doc interesting. It was about how we all work too much. But also about some people who don't work. (NEETs- Not in Education, Employment, or Training- are living it up on their wealthy parents' dime in Italy.) It had examples from all over the world (did you know every citizen of Kuwait is entitled to a full-time job?) but I don't think I came away with any new ideas about 'work' or 'jobs' as a concept. It didn't get into the other side of things, like the Gen Z "I do not dream of labour" or "quiet quitting" which I'm more familiar with. Or show how 4-day, 6-hour work weeks have improved lives in those clever Nordic countries who do that. My feelings about 'work' are somewhere between asking for 4-day work weeks and also feeling that pressure to be constantly productive. Because I would like fewer hours of my week to be working a day job that I need to make money (except when the day job is to watch movies all day) so that I could spend more hours in my week on unpaid work that I enjoy doing, like writing about films, writing about fairy tales, writing about fairy tale films, writing fairy tales. I love to work- when it's work I want to do. But only a chosen few can get paid for just doing the creative work they want to... (Glares enviously at millionaire TikTokers.)
And the next day I returned to regularly scheduled programming. Still on my couch, on my laptop, 10am-6pm. Back to reality... Until the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival online programming began a few days later...
😅 I guess the ol' day job isn't always so bad.
A six-episode season of the podcast is in the works to be released September-November this year. Just letting you know. You will hear me talk about movies again soon. With some new and exciting guests!
Until then, I talk about fairy tale films in my Tales with Tish video essays.