Cannes From My Couch, 2025
Just me and my noise-cancelling headphones against the world.
Since 2021, I have ‘attended’ the Cannes Film Festival Marché du Film Online, thanks to my job as film programmer at the International Film Festival of Ottawa (IFFO). I get to skip the heat, high UV, and crowds of the south of France and instead watch a multitude of films from the comfort of my own home. Thanks, pandemic, for changing the format of film festivals, forcing them to pivot to online streaming!
I’ve written before about my couch experiences, so if you’d like to know how busy my schedule can be, the essentials required (noise-cancelling headphones, fidget toy, snacks), and how the whole thing works, you can read those posts.
Previously from my couch:
This year felt different. For one, I am actually no longer working full-time for IFFO. So, though I was tracking my films in the IFFO Airtable for the Festival, I did not have to also work my day job in between screenings or talk to anyone on Chat. (A general relief of the change in employment… no one talking to me all day…)
I also noticed that this year’s schedule seemed sparse compared to previous years. It wasn’t just that I was choosing less to add to my own schedule; I’m not picky, I ask to see just about everything. My Google Calendar had only a few overlaps of 3+ films, instead of multiple 5, 6, 7-deep areas on my calendar days, like past years. I hope this isn’t the beginning of a pattern of fewer and fewer films online from now on…
I also consciously ‘took it easy’ this year, not feeling so pressured to make the most of the time or beat my previous film totals. I did only one 4-film day, the rest three or fewer. Three films in a day is plenty- have you ever done it? Not a binge of a series/franchise, but three completely different films from different countries in different languages and genres. It’s an emotional rollercoaster.
Letterboxd from my couch
I’m new to Letterboxd and not really into reviews, but I started tracking my watches starting this calendar year.1 You can see I haven’t been watching much (considering I’m a film programmer?), so if you’re wondering which is Cannes viewing, it’s the only thing in May so far.
Only three films a day? What else was I doing?
Keeping up with Tales with Tish social media schedule
Getting fresh air on the balcony
Looking at the sunset
Eating food
Lying down and closing my eyes
Watching Can*Con Level Up writer talks
Attending the Carterhaugh salon and book club
Watching Bake Off
Scrolling through IG
Reading
Watching thunderstorms
Well, let’s get into what I watched and what I thought of it.
Some days had unplanned themes:
Day 1: Nordic dramedies
100 Litres of Gold (Finland), Odd Fish (Iceland)
Day 4: Mothers’ Tough Decisions
Frieda’s Case (Switzerland), The Devil Smokes (Mexico), The Day Iceland Stood Still (Iceland)
Day 5: Escaping One’s Life
Caravan (Czech Republic) and The Portuguese House (Spain)
Day 6: The Most Horrifying Act I Cannot Say
We Believe You (Belgium), Karla (Germany), Manas (Brazil)
Day 7: Lesbians
Love Letters (France), 1 Girl Infinite (USA), Montreal, Ma Belle (Canada)
As you’ll see on my Letterboxd, I didn’t give anything 5 stars. There were some really great films that I will want to program for IFFO, but nothing I really loved for myself. And some of the best films contain some of the most difficult themes, which makes them hard to love, even if they make me want to recommend people see them.
Things on screen that made me cry:
Someone walking away from a bad person to go make better choices, a trans woman happily coming out as her true self to a group of her peers, a teenager’s funeral, a woman being sentenced to life in solitary confinement, the progress made for women in Iceland after they went on strike in 1975, a broken-hearted man being kind to a stranger, a judge telling a child “we believe you”, a man justifying what he did to his young daughter, a girl burying a body, a 50+ woman defying her husband.
I texted a friend that watching French films this week was doing more for me than Duolingo French lessons because it really gets in my head. She said it hadn’t occurred to her that I was watching films not in English…
So, here are some of the languages I heard this week during an international film festival:
Finnish, Icelandic, Italian, Czech, Slovakian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, German, French, Estonian, Japanese, Burmese, Mandarin, and a little bit of English.
I have literally learned about countries I didn’t know existed by watching films at Cannes MDF. (Anyone familiar with Burkina Faso? Watch Sira.) This year, I added Myanmar to my film map.2
It was a strange time this year. Having been unemployed for only a week before, not settled into a new ‘working for myself’ schedule before being thrown off by Cannes week. And, on a larger scale, I haven’t been watching a lot of films the past year (or more) because, although I was working for a film festival org, I was otherwise concentrating on writing and publishing my first book, not keeping up with the film industry.
Watching so many films in such a short amount of time usually kick-starts something in me, reminding me how much I love films and storytelling. I’m not sure if this time I’m motivated to keep up a frequent movie watching routine now, or if I’m just feeling worn out on films for a while. Keeping up with the film industry is a lot, and though I love films and film programming, it’s a never-ending race to be informed about both the older films that you’re expected to know and everything coming out next.
Can I keep up? Will I get any film programming jobs? Stay tuned!
I’ve been tracking my TV and movie watching since 2014 in Docs, then Sheets, now Airtable. I just haven’t tracked in Letterboxd til this year. And I will continue to keep my own records because… I can’t stop now. I track stuff like women, BIPOC, LGBT+ on screen and behind the camera. We used to go over stuff like the percentage of women-directed films we watched in our yearly recap podcast episodes of Rated F.
To be clear: I knew of Myanmar, I just hadn’t seen a film made there.