Cannes Confidential: Badges, Backrooms, and Blacklists

For all its talk of celebrating artistic freedom, Cannes itself is a fortress of gatekeeping

Hi everyone,

We’re dropping into your inbox a little early this week because Eddie AI is at Cannes, thanks to Efosa. We’ll also be back Friday with the next long form epic about an event that split the industry. Our first long form was about the sunglasses billionaire who founded RED cinema digital camera.

Over at Eddie AI HQ, we’re also having a big week. Yesterday we launched the Eddie extension for Adobe Premiere Pro (No Film School’s article), and today we launched an extension for DaVinci Resolve (CineD’s coverage). And we had fun making the launch videos (though one Robbie is more than enough).

So, why are we talking about Cannes this week (aside from our marketing team reminding us to stay topical)? Everyone knows Cannes is glamorous, a cinematic Shangri-La where A-listers glide up red carpets, flashbulbs pop like fireworks, and yachts double as cocktail lounges. A mecca for anyone chasing cinema, clout, and or both.

But the more time you spend here, the clearer it becomes: Cannes isn’t one festival. It’s fifty happening at once. One for the gatekeepers. One for the dreamers. The distributors, the sales agents, the editors, the influencers, the auteurs, the TikTok kids, and the tech weirdos who somehow got a Marché badge without a single film credit.

What most people don’t really realize, until you’re on the ground, is just how strange, hierarchical, and ruthlessly controlled it really is. For all its talk of celebrating artistic freedom, Cannes itself is a fortress of gatekeeping. A place of hierarchy. Unspoken rules. And a language you have to learn and I’m not talking about French.

-Shamir

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Seen, But Not Welcome: Why Cannes Loves Crew and Fears No-Name Actors

Firstly, going to Cannes means many things. You can go to Cannes without accreditation just like you can go to college parties without being enrolled. You’ll hear the music, maybe even get inside, but good luck finding the room where the real stuff happens.

Getting accredited is both easy and hard at the same time. All depends on what kind of lie your career tells on paper. If you’re a film professional in any capacity, you’re good. Production coordinator? In. DIT on one short film in 2019? Cool.. Composer on a web series no one saw? Bienvenue.

But if you’re an actor? Good luck. If you’re Margot Robbie or Denzel, sure. But if you're a working actor with modest credits, even good ones, suddenly the walls close in.

The same festival that welcomes a second assistant editor with no credits will grill you like a customs agent if you say you’re an actor without marquee billing. “What films?”. “Do you have press coverage? Who’s your agent?”

There’s an unspoken suspicion of performers without prestige or proof. You can be the star of a microbudget feature in Un Certain Regard and still get less access than a line producer on a Netflix docuseries.

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Badge Colors Are a Caste System

Cannes is color-coded. Every accredited attendee wears a badge around their neck, and the color of that badge determines your rank in the ecosystem.

Yellow? You’re at the bottom. Blue? Slightly better. Pink? Now you’re getting places. White? Royalty.

The color dictates everything: how long you wait in line, how likely you are to get into a screening, and where you’re allowed to sit once inside.

Some badges come with dots that unlock additional perks, like skipping lines. There are whispered rumors of a mythical "Carte Blanche" badge that grants all-access everywhere but few have seen it.

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The Standing Ovation Stopwatch

Cannes standing ovations are legendary, often reported as if they measure divine artistic merit. But the truth is they’re not as wild as they sound.

These ovations have been dissected for years, with each Cannes edition sparking debates about which film got the most minutes, as if it's a leaderboard.

What rarely gets mentioned is the structure behind it. The crowd isn’t just clapping the director or the main cast.

They’re clapping the entire cast, the producers, the cinematographer, the costume designer and so on. When a single film credits 500 people, it’s no wonder a proper round of applause could easily run up to half an hour.

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The Market Lives Below the Glamour

Two floors below the Lumière Theatre is the Marché du Film, a sprawling, fluorescent-lit marketplace where over 12,000 industry professionals gather to buy, sell, and pitch.

While upstairs Palme d’Or hopefuls screen for the press, downstairs you’re more likely to see someone is trying to sell Sharknado 12 to a Saudi distributor.

Cannes is really both high art and high hustle. And you really feel the latter in the basement.

Many producers come not to premiere, but to presell: they show posters and sizzle reels to territories hoping to lock in financing.

Outside the film market looks like cinema’s version of an Olympic village.

Lining the beach and spilling into the Palais are rows of country-branded pavilions, each one a little embassy for national cinema.

Pretty much every single major country will have some sort of representation at the pavilions. With each country rep talking about their country’s films like Olympic countries talk about their teams.

We’ve been prepping for this season since Berlin," one delegate told me, straight-faced, like they were sending a sprint team to Tokyo.

"We’ve got a strong lineup this year, two in competition, one in Directors’ Fortnight, and a couple sleepers in the market we think’ll surprise people.”

It’s an essential chaos. The beating capitalist heart of what otherwise is one of the biggest art events of the year.

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Cannes Isn’t Just a Film Festival, It’s a Nexus of the entire entertainment industry

Beyond the ovations, the flea market-like Marché Cannes is something else entirely. Picture the Met Gala, Disneyland, the Oscars’, and like I said, Olympics’ all rolled into one.

Billionaires, TikTokers, film tax accountants, actors, indie directors, sleazy studio execs, cinephiles, and escorts all orbit the same sun-drenched Croisette like it’s the center of the film universe, because for two weeks in May, it is.

The Croisette becomes a kind of cinematic Choose Your Own Adventure.

Some people leave with distribution deals, some hangovers and hard drives. Some leave having seen 25 films. Others leave having seen none.

No single event fuses business, art, and ego quite like Cannes.

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Coordinates Only: The Hidden Collective That Runs Cannes After Hours

The true soul of Cannes nightlife lives far from the gala. Private villa parties, secret-code-only beach takeovers, backroom DJ sets hidden behind closed doors, these are the parties that really matter.

Beyond that there’s a tight-knit underground collective known for throwing real parties. No flyer. No PR. No guest lists you can bribe your way onto. These last-minute takeovers take place at abandoned villas, shuttered beach clubs, defunct warehouses suddenly arising overnight.

Some nights they even have a password at the door (no I won’t give you it).

It’s strictly anti-dress code. You get a text with a time and co-ordinates and they host some of the most infamous parties at Cannes.

If you know, you go. If you don’t, you weren’t meant to. And by the morning the party vanishes like it was never even there.

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Beyond the Glamour, Back to the Frame

But beneath the badges, the backrooms, and the billion-dollar bidding wars, Cannes is really about one thing:

The chase.Everyone here is chasing something, money, meaning, tail, sleep, validation, a reason to keep going.

It might take you until the end of your time at Cannes to find out what you’re chasing but there will be something. And if you’re one of the beautifully irrational people who chose this industry, Cannes reminds you why.

Not why you started but why you stay.

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