What Are You Actually Going to the Cannes Film Festival for?
Cannes on paper and in practice on the ground are two different things. Many people know about Cannes because of the showbiz and the big celebrity premieres, and over the years the many iconic photocalls and launches held at the festival.
Running alongside the film launches and press screenings is one of the world's largest film markets, bringing together the highest concentration of industry people to hopefully do some business and secure interest in their project, showcase their slate, get producers on board, find out who is doing what, and much more.
The thing about this festival is that if you are not careful, you can be pulled in so many different directions if you are not clear about your goals and have not made some sort of plan in advance. With so many different country pavilions showcasing their homegrown productions and reasons to shoot in their country, alongside film companies, distributors and sales agents, it can feel like you need to connect with everyone, especially if you are wanting to cut a deal or generate interest. Before you head to the South of France, you need to think through a few areas.
Why are you at Cannes this year? What does a good week look like for you? Who are you trying to meet, and what do you want those conversations to achieve?
Be realistic about who you can get time with out there. The bigger the company, the harder it is to secure a meeting unless it was booked well in advance. That does not mean you cannot meet them at all, but on the ground it will be much harder, as they will have filled their diary and will prioritise bigger players for any free slots, via their own scouts, connections or recommendations.
Why is it important to make a target list?
This may seem like obvious advice, but having a clear list of who you are genuinely targeting, and a wider list of who you would talk to if the opportunity came up, makes a real difference. Some may wonder where to start finding out who is attending. Make sure you dive into Cinando, the database platform that comes with your accreditation and is widely regarded as the trusted online platform for film and audiovisual professionals. First launched in 2003, it now has over 100,000 users worldwide. With an updated platform as of this year, each major festival including Cannes has its own dedicated digital hub. It is the one resource you should be getting familiar with before you arrive, both for finding contacts and for reaching out in advance.
Should you book meetings before you arrive or wait until you get to Cannes?
With access to the Cinando database, attendees to the Marche du Film should be making full use of this and seeing who they can set up meetings or introductions with, alongside contacts they already want to meet. Whilst there is always room for some meetings to happen through contact, conversation and chance encounters at Cannes, try not to rely on filling your schedule only when you arrive. Many, if not most, of the bigger meetings are booked weeks in advance and locked in ahead of the start of the festival. Leaving outreach until you arrive will prove frustrating, as most key contacts simply will not have time to see you.
How do people manage both the Cannes festival and all the networking and business at the Marche du Film?
There is a glamorous side to Cannes, and even those here to do serious business at the Marche du Film want to experience some of it, perhaps a red carpet premiere or one of the many parties. But remember why you are at the festival and pace yourself, so that the nightlife, parties and social side do not come at the expense of doing business. Many first-timers, and regulars too, find they are spending most of their time inside the Palais or the pavilions, running from meeting to meeting, with little time left for the traditional Cannes that everyone imagines. This is where the cautionary advice often given to new attendees rings true. Pace yourself, but do not let the social side take away from why you are here. If you do not strike the right balance, those key meetings become harder to secure, people are fatigued all round, and your work and social battery crashes before the week is out.
How long should you go to the Cannes Film Festival for?
There are a number of factors at play here, the most important being availability and budget. If you can justify it, aim for five to seven days to make the most of the trip. Any less and you will find the time disappears before you have hit your stride. Whilst the advice is to set up as many meetings as possible before you arrive, you will equally have other things you want to do, from workshops and events to wider networking, and off the back of those, additional conversations, spontaneous meetings and follow-ups that come from early promising chats. Make the most of your budget and stretch your stay as long as possible. A longer stay also allows for downtime, the chance to sneak in a few screenings, and the space to follow up on the conversations that are worth continuing.
Most people heading to the Marche with a project are trying to do several things at once, and not all of them are about closing a deal.
Getting the project in front of the right people is the obvious one. But alongside that, most are trying to get a genuine sense check — whether the project is being positioned correctly, whether it has the commercial appeal they believe it does, and what the feedback tells them about where it needs to go next.
Some are trying to plant a seed with people they could not reach over email, so that when they do follow up in the summer it is not a cold approach. Others are using the week to understand where the market is moving, what is selling, and who is buying what, so they can sharpen how they talk about their project for the rest of the year.
Very few are closing deals. But every conversation, from a casual terrace chat to a formal Marche meeting, is the beginning of something if you treat it that way.
The most useful mindset going in is to see Cannes as information gathering as much as pitching. Every room tells you something. What lands and what does not. Where the project needs to be stronger. Whether the ambition matches the market. What is working for others when you are lucky enough to be in conversations where that comes up. The people who get the most out of Cannes are not always the ones who leave with the most interest. They are the ones who leave knowing exactly what they need to do next, whether that is refining the pitch, adjusting the positioning, or rethinking their approach before the next festival or market.
It depends on what you are going to do with the time, and how honest you are prepared to be about where the project actually sits.
Going to Cannes with a project in early development is not a mistake in itself. Some of the most useful conversations happen before a project is fully formed, because the people you meet will tell you things that shape it before it is too late to change them. A sales agent who tells you the concept is interesting but the budget does not make sense for the territory, or a financier who flags that the attachment you are counting on is not as compelling as you think, is giving you information you cannot easily get anywhere else.
What does not work is going with something half formed and presenting it as if it is ready. People see that immediately and it damages your credibility for the conversation you are actually trying to have. The answer is not to stay away. It is to be clear with yourself and with the people you meet about what stage you are at and what kind of conversation you are looking to have. That honesty, handled well, is not a weakness. It often opens doors that a polished but hollow pitch would not.
If the project is genuinely too early, the value of Cannes does not disappear. It shifts. You are there to build relationships, understand the market, and set yourself up for the conversation you will have at the next festival or market when the project is further along.
First, that is more common than people admit. And second, it depends entirely on what you mean by nothing.
If you mean no signed deals, no letters of intent, no committed partners, then you are in the majority. The Marche is not where most deals close. It is where the conversations that eventually lead to deals begin. Leaving without a signature is not the same as leaving empty handed.
What you should be measuring is different. Did you get in front of the right people? Did you learn something about how your project is being received that you did not know before you arrived? Did you make connections that, followed up properly, could develop into something over the coming months? Did you come back with a clearer sense of what needs to change, whether that is the pitch, the materials, the positioning, or the project itself?
The Marche is one of the very few places where you get live, unfiltered feedback from the buyers, sales agents, distributors and financiers whose opinion actually matters commercially. That feedback, taken seriously and acted on before the next festival or market, is worth more than a lukewarm expression of interest from the wrong person.
A Cannes where nothing signed but you gain knowledge about what works and what the industry is favouring currently, and a better idea of how to further develop your project, is not a failed Cannes. For most people, it is exactly what the first one looks like. And the ones who treat it that way are the ones who come back the following year with something worth signing.
These are the questions most people do not ask themselves before they arrive at the festival and the situations most people are not ready for when they do.
Because the relationships that lead to deals start here in the Marche or elsewhere in the festival. A conversation at an event or after an industry talk can lead to a follow-up later during the festival, and they do decide to come back to you once they get through all their notes. A Marche meeting that appears to go nowhere in May turns into something else when you see each other again at another film market later in the year. Cannes is of course where you want to make your initial pitch for the project, but also is the beginning of a process. Take away the pressure that you must have something confirmed before you leave. The work you do there can then be picked up for the rest of the year.
Most people heading to the Marche with a project are trying to do several things at once, and not all of them are about closing a deal. Getting the project in front of the right people is the obvious one. But alongside that, most are trying to get a genuine sense check — whether the project is being positioned correctly, whether it has the commercial appeal they believe it does, and what the feedback tells them about where it needs to go next. Some are trying to plant a seed with people they could not reach over email, so that when they do follow up in the summer it is not a cold approach. Others are using the week to understand where the market is moving, what is selling, and who is buying what, so they can sharpen how they talk about their project for the rest of the year.
Very few are closing deals. But every conversation, from a casual terrace chat to a formal Marche meeting, is the beginning of something if you treat it that way. The most useful mindset going in is to see Cannes as information gathering as much as pitching. Every room tells you something. What lands and what does not. Where the project needs to be stronger. Whether the ambition matches the market. What is working for others when you are lucky enough to be in conversations where that comes up. The people who get the most out of Cannes are not always the ones who leave with the most interest. They are the ones who leave knowing exactly what they need to do next, whether that is refining the pitch, adjusting the positioning, or rethinking their approach before the next festival or market. That clarity is worth as much as any meeting.
Most of it, especially if you are very much starting out on the project or are an unknown entity, which of course poses a greater risk, for buyers and agents to do more research and compare notes with other team members. Cannes is where you open the doors, and how you handle those conversations after the festival matters as much as what happens during it.
Faster than you think. If it takes more than thirty seconds to explain what your film is, most people have already moved on in their head. Of course there is more than just the opening part of the pitch for the film. They are deciding whether it is worth more of their time. That decision happens in the first exchange. It is about knowing what the essential version of your project is and being able to go there immediately.
And when the conversation shifts, as it will, a Marche meeting can start with your project and end up somewhere you did not expect. Someone challenges your positioning. They ask about the budget before you are ready. They reframe the project entirely. Staying clear when that happens is not a language issue. It is a preparation issue. And it is one of the things that separates the people who leave Cannes with something from the people who leave wondering what happened.
Some people either start back at the beginning or rush to get to the end sensing that time is running out. The interruption is part of the conversation, not a problem with it, unless they do say outright this is not for them. How you handle it tells the person in front of you a lot about how you handle pressure. Stay with them, not with your script.
This is the question most people forget to ask or look into before the meeting. You can explain your project clearly and still lose the room because the person you are talking to does not seem a commercial fit or have compatibility with the work they already do. Knowing their slate, their territory, what they passed on last year, changes how you frame everything. It is not about changing your project. It is about knowing which parts of it matter to this specific person.
First, make sure you have actually read the room correctly and this genuinely is not the right fit. This is where you have to think quickly and work out whether it is worth trying to reframe your approach or whether they have already mentally moved on and are filling time before their next meeting. It does take practice to get a quick sense check and read those signals accurately.
What also helps is knowing how important this company or person is to you. If they were on your ideal target list, is it worth pivoting your approach and trying something new to save the conversation? Can you establish whether they are open to talking again if you come back with more information, or when the project is further developed? Is there any feedback on what they would need to see to have that conversation again?
Whilst rejection is hard, sometimes there are positives that come out of it, opening up discussion for this project later down the line, or feedback you may not want to hear right now but that is useful for the next one. How you handle that moment when it becomes clear this is not the right match matters more than most people think.
Most people prepare for the pitch. Far fewer prepare for what comes after the interest. And that is where inexperienced filmmakers and producers get caught out.
Depending on who you are meeting and what stage your project is at, the conversation can move very quickly from tell me about your film to here is what we would need to get involved. A financier coming in at development stage may want a say on casting, locations, or the script. A co-production partner may want to bring in their own writer or director. An executive producer with serious money behind them may want meaningful creative control — not as a suggestion, but as a condition. A distributor who has seen a screener may want cuts or re-edits before they will commit. A sales agent may want to reposition the film entirely, in ways that feel unrecognisable from how you see it.
None of this is unusual. All of it requires you to have thought through your position before you sit down.
The mistake is not having done that thinking. Because in the room, under pressure, with someone showing real interest for the first time, the instinct is to say yes to keep the conversation alive. And once you have said yes in that room, you own it. Walking it back over email kills credibility faster than almost anything else.
Equally dangerous is the opposite — reacting to any suggestion of creative input as if it is an attack on the work. People read that stiffness immediately, and it closes doors that the project itself may have opened.
Knowing what you will accept, what you will push back on, and how to hold that position with confidence rather than panic — that is not being difficult. It is being ready.
It rarely looks like a disaster in the moment. That is what makes it dangerous.
It looks like pitching a project as further along than it is, and then being asked for a screener, a budget breakdown, or an attached producer you do not have. The conversation does not end. It just quietly loses air.
It looks like saying yes to a co-production structure you have not thought through because the person across the table has real money and you do not want to lose them. You leave thinking the meeting went well. They leave thinking you will agree to anything.
It looks like visibly stiffening when someone suggests bringing in a different director, or mentions they would want to see changes before committing. You did not say no. But they saw it. And they will not follow up.
It looks like not knowing the difference between what a sales agent needs from you versus what a financier needs versus what a distributor needs, and pitching the same way to all three. One of them was actually interested. You just did not speak their language.
And sometimes it looks like nothing at all in the room, a perfectly pleasant conversation, and then silence afterwards, because something you said or did not say told them enough.
The people who handle these moments well are not necessarily more experienced. They are more prepared. They have thought through the scenarios before they are sitting in them.
Not knowing what you are actually asking for, or asking for the wrong thing entirely.
Some people leave without ever making a clear ask. The conversation goes well enough, there is genuine interest in the room, and then it just ends. No next step, no clear close, nothing for the other person to take away or act on. They were interested. You gave them no reason to follow up.
The opposite is just as damaging. Coming in with an inflated ask, behaving as if you have leverage you have not earned, or misjudging where you sit in the room relative to the person across the table, signals inexperience immediately. If you have had one or two encouraging conversations elsewhere and arrive at the next meeting acting as if you are already in demand, the person across the table knows exactly where things stand. They do not need to say anything. They just move on.
And then there is not listening. Not the casual kind, where you miss a detail. The damaging kind, where someone tells you directly what they would need to see to get involved, and you are so locked into your own pitch that you do not register it, carry on talking, and leave without having responded to the one thing that could have moved everything forward.
The ask, the close, and the ability to actually hear what is being said to you. Get those wrong and it does not matter how good the project is.
The feedback is remarkably consistent across all of them. The faces change. The frustrations do not.
Buyers need to know immediately whether this is something they can sell in their territory. What wastes their time faster than anything else is a filmmaker who cannot tell them quickly and clearly what the film is, who it is for, and why it travels. Vagueness on audience, genre and commercial positioning is not something they will sit through for long. They also have limited patience for someone who has walked in without any sense of whether the film is even remotely right for their market.
Sales agents are thinking about positioning, markets and what they can realistically take to buyers around the world. What frustrates them is a filmmaker with no commercial awareness of where their project sits, or worse, an inflated idea of its value that does not reflect the reality of what is selling. They also notice immediately when someone has not looked at their existing slate before walking in. It tells them everything about how seriously they have been taken.
Distributors need to understand how a film reaches an audience in their specific market. What they find frustrating is a filmmaker so focused on the artistic vision that they cannot engage with the commercial conversation. They are not asking you to compromise the work. They are asking you to understand how it travels, and whether you have thought about that at all.
Financiers are assessing risk as much as potential. Imprecision on budget is the thing that loses them fastest, not just vague numbers but over-inflated line items, costs that do not hold up against the scale of the project, or figures that clearly have not been stress tested. They ask specific questions for a reason. Weak answers do not just cost you their confidence in the project. They cost you their confidence in you as someone who can manage money responsibly. Vagueness on attachments and timeline lands the same way.
Co-production partners are thinking carefully about what they bring and what they get in return. Creative control, territory, credits, rights. What frustrates them is a filmmaker who has not thought any of this through and treats co-production as simply another word for funding. They want someone who understands what a real partnership involves and has already formed a position on it before sitting down.
Executive producers with serious money behind them often have strong opinions on creative direction, casting and how the project develops. What frustrates them is being treated as a cheque rather than a collaborator, or a filmmaker who agrees to everything in the room and then quietly resists once the relationship begins. They have seen that before. They read the signs early and they do not forget them.
The thread running through all of it is the same. They are not just assessing your project. They are assessing whether you are someone they can work with when things get complicated. And in this industry, at some point, they always do.
Dismissing or being unable to engage with constructive feedback. That is the one that cuts across all of them.
When someone senior, experienced, and well connected enough to be sitting across from you at Cannes takes the time to tell you what they think needs to change, what would make this project more commercially viable, what would make them more confident about getting involved, and you meet that with resistance, defensiveness, or a polite but obvious unwillingness to really hear it, you have lost the room. Not just for this project. Potentially for the next one too.
The stakes get higher the bigger the ask. If you are looking for a financier to come in during production, a co-production partner to bring serious resource and expertise, or an executive producer to put their name and reputation behind the project alongside their money, you are asking for an enormous level of trust and commitment. The question they are asking themselves, often without saying it out loud, is whether you are someone they can work with when things get difficult, when changes need to be made, when the project does not go exactly as planned.
Remaining completely fixed, treating every note as an attack on your vision, or making it clear that what you really want is a silent partner who funds everything and disappears, tells them everything they need to know. They are not just investing in a project. They are investing in you. And if the first sign of how you handle challenge is a closed door, they will not be walking through it.
The professionals who build real relationships at Cannes, and beyond it, are the ones who can hold their vision and stay open at the same time. That balance is not a compromise. It is the whole game.
Not broadly. Specifically. Which projects. Which territories. What stage they got involved. That is the difference between walking in prepared and walking in with a pitch that misses the room.
This matters as much as what they said yes to. If they consistently pass on projects without strong co-production structures, you need to know that before the meeting starts, not after they stop asking questions.
Look at their website, their social feeds, their recent trade press coverage. How do they position their slate? What language do they use? What do they emphasise — territory, audience, genre, director profile? If you can see how they market what they already have, you can show them how your project fits that picture. The same principle applies whether you are talking to a buyer or a sales agent.
This is the decision most people skip. They lead with the angle they are most comfortable with rather than the one that is most relevant to the person across the table. Knowing which angle to open with, and when to shift, comes from understanding who you are meeting.
That question is not an invitation to pitch harder. It is asking you to do their job for a moment. To show that you understand their business well enough to answer honestly. Hesitating loses more ground than a straight no.
After many conversations, it can be hard to keep thinking of fresh ways to pitch your project with the same energy you had when you first arrived. Some people fall back to the baseline version of the pitch that, a few days in, feels like you are on automatic pilot. The golden rule is to keep varying and tailoring what you say, or at least be conscious of the need to mix it up. Every person you meet at Cannes has different context, different commercial priorities, different things they are trying to achieve, and different criteria that projects need to meet in order for them to see it as viable. The pitch that landed in the first few meetings may not land in others.
Everyone has a version of their project they feel confident delivering. The question is what happens when a buyer, sales agent or distributor asks something that takes you off your prepared script. If you can only explain your film in one way and are not able to handle more critical questions, you need to be better prepared for the Marche. What you can work on is how not to lose your thread when someone focuses on a detail that feels insignificant to you but is part of how they test whether an idea is worth their time and effort, even for further discussions.
Not every meeting at Cannes goes the way you planned, and not every response you get will be the one you were hoping for. Disappointment is part of the process. Rejection happens. Developing a thick skin matters, and so does not taking it personally when a conversation does not land the way you expected.
When the questions get harder, the instinct for many people is to get defensive. Try to resist it. A buyer who pushes back or probes the weak spots in your project is not attacking you. They are doing their job, and often they are engaged enough to want answers. See it as an opportunity to listen, absorb and respond. Not with stock answers, but with a genuine understanding of your material and a willingness to engage with what they are actually asking. How you handle the difficult moments tells the person across the table as much about you as the project itself.
Often more than people realise. The person you are speaking to may not be making the final call alone. They may need to take your project to others internally, justify their interest, or bring in partners before anything moves forward. How you handle yourself in that first conversation affects whether they feel confident putting you in front of those people. Defensiveness, dismissiveness, or a negative reaction to a tough question can close a door that the project itself might have opened. The professionals who do well at Cannes tend to be the ones who stay open, stay professional, and treat even the hardest conversation as a chance to build something.
Yes, and more than you might expect. Due diligence, deal conversations, getting close to signing — all of it involves more scrutiny, not less. Evasiveness or any sense that you are difficult to work with will raise doubts, especially when there are others pitching similar projects who are open and collaborative from day one. That first meeting is not just about the project. It is also an early indication of what you might be like when things get complicated, and in this industry things always get complicated at some point.
It is also worth remembering that this is a chemistry test that runs both ways. You are assessing them as much as they are assessing you. Do they understand the kind of work you make? Do they feel like people you could have a hard conversation with when a deal is under pressure? Not everyone has the luxury of walking away, but knowing your own bottom lines and reading the room from your side of the table is part of being a professional, not a sign of being difficult.
More than you think, and less than you hope. For most people, Cannes is not where deals close. It is where relationships start or deepen, where projects get seen, and where you begin to understand where your work sits in the market. Leaving with a handful of real conversations worth continuing, some genuine interest and a clearer sense of what the next steps might be is a good Cannes for most people.
Do not put too much pressure on the week itself. What you are really there to do is show that you are someone worth working with. That you are professional, engaged, collaborative, and that you bring something others do not. If people leave a conversation with you thinking they would like to stay in touch, that is the foundation everything else is built on. The green shoots matter. Most of what grows from Cannes grows after it.
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