The Flipsides of Cannes — Featuring Wim Wenders and more

With Cannes 2024 underway, host Rico Gagliano takes a tour of the less-known corners of the legendary film festival—avoiding red-carpet glamour to bring you tales of spiritual seekers, aspiring filmmakers on the street, and the ongoing drama of the fest’s favorite dive bar. Featuring on-location conversations with Wim Wenders, UK critic Anna Bogutskaya, ecumenical jury member Jane Stranz, and a bunch of random passersby.

Wim Wenders' PERFECT DAYS is now streaming exclusively on MUBI in the UK, Ireland, India, Turkey, and Latin America.

In honour of the Cannes Film Festival, we present a selection of a few favorites from the past editions in our Cannes Takeover series.

To stream more of the films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.

MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.

Transcript

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So the audience at Cannes is infamous for booing or applauding. Have you experienced both? Do you mainly get applause? What's been your experience with your films? I've been booed and I've been ignored. I've experienced standing ovations up to 22 minutes, I was told at one point. Which one was that? That was, believe it or not,<i>Don't Come Knocking</i>. Sam Shepherd just couldn't take it anymore. After 10 minutes, he said,"Can we get out of here? Is this gonna go on forever?" He couldn't believe it. Sam Shepherd, of course, wrote and starred in that movie. Yes, he needed a drink and... 22 minutes of being applauded is insane! You don't know what to do anymore. For the first minutes, you bow and you're happy and after 10 minutes you start getting nervous and after 22 minutes, you think you are in a film by Buñuel. And you'll never get out of it. And Sam was getting paranoid. He whispered to me,"I need to get out of here." He couldn't take it anymore. That is the great filmmaker Wim Wenders talking to me outside a hotel at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2018. And I love that story 'cause it's a hint of how Cannes ain't always what it seems. Every year for two weeks, the international film industry invades this resort town on the French Riviera. And if you've never been the images of it you probably have in your head are super swank. Stars posing on the red carpet models lounging at beach parties, celebrities in designer clothes, givin' those epic ovations to other celebrities in designer clothes. And don't get me wrong, that's all there. But it turns out there's also room at Cannes for the down to earth. Like when you just want to get the hell out of the cinema and find a cheap drink. I'm Rico Galiano. Welcome back to the MUBI podcast. MUBI's the streaming service, the champions great cinema. This show tells you the stories behind great cinema. Or in this case behind a festival of great cinema. Cannes 2024 is in full swing as we speak. In fact, a lot of my MUBI colleagues are there right now while I'm at home on kid duty. So today I thought I'd put together some of my favorite tape I collected at Cannes 2023 that paints a different picture of the festival, away from the red carpet. Full of spiritual seekers... A story that offers hope. I suppose that's what we're looking for. Film school kids looking for a miracle. Alright, so what I'm doing is called, for those unfamiliar, begging. And one legendary dive bar. This is so unsanitary and unsafe. Stick around to the end and you'll also hear more from Wim Wenders. Meanwhile, take off that black tie and pull on a pair of comfy walking shoes for a quick meander through the other sides of Cannes. So, yeah, my first trip to Cannes was 2018 and the night I rolled in, here's the first sound I recorded. Movie industry parties going off on a line of yachts docked pretty much right next to the fest's main venue The <i>Palais des Festivals</i>. Big security dudes making sure rabble like me didn't get aboard folks in tuxes and gowns dancing on the decks. It was the Cannes-t thing ever. But my first stop last year sounded a little different. Just a kilometer from the yacht docks, sits an old villa. Home to a little community of Catholic sisters and a priest. Upstairs they were doing morning mass. Then I crept downstairs to interview one of their house guests. Ok. My name is Jane Stranz and I'm here as one of the members of the Ecumenical Jury. I should explain, Cannes has a lot of film juries handing out a lot of awards. There's official juries that bestow big prizes like the Palme D'or, but also independent juries from outside groups. The Ecumenical Jury is one of those. It's put together by a couple of interfaith Christian organizations and it's comprised of six jurors like Jane who is a pastor, a feminist theologian and a lifelong film nerd. And we look at all of the films that are in the festival. We watch all of them from the beginning to the end. That's what we have to do. And we give a prize and we're not looking for an explicit Christian message, we're looking for a movie that will show something about the complexity of human life and shows a way through that. There's a French word which is <i>récit</i>, which is a story, something that makes meaning and that offers hope, I suppose. That would be the key criteria that we're looking at is hope. Yeah, just to be clear, I'm not religious. On my optimistic days, I may be agnostic. But the films this jury honors aren't usually religious either. So much as empathetic, humane. In fact, I find a lot about the jury and their work just charming. Right down to their digs. We're sitting here having this interview in a tiny little sort of nunnery, a sister's home. We're making our own breakfast. We're looking after ourselves. There are piles-- It looks just like my study at home. I mean, there's piles of books in the corner, there's a kettle. It's great. And so it's... It's not, but it's not glam. No, no, we're not, we're certainly not lodging in five star hotels. Although all my parishioners sort of said "Oh, you'll be..." I said, "No, it's so much more grounded". So when I wake up here in the mornings, the sisters are already singing morning prayer and it's a wonderful, wonderful sound. It is so <i>not</i> Cannes. But don't get it twisted, humble as they live these folks command respect. Ecumenical juries, hand out prizes at other fests, but it feels like Cannes' is the most prestigious. Jane says they're the only independent jury actually welcomed to Cannes by the mayor. And we do also have red carpet. So we've got a red carpet event on Sunday. So we've got all of our gad rags with us. And we're gonna go up those red stairs.- I mean, it's--- Yeah, what is the whiplash like? Because you're right, I'm standing, when I came up the driveway here it is, it's like this little kind of very traditional looking Catholic outpost and you basically walk, you know, half a kilometer or something. And you are like in the center of the glam world. What does that feel like? Well, I mean, I think it's quite, it's just really amazing. I was sort of sitting in the fabulous garden near the Palais, where all of the cinemas are and so on and where it's all happening and actually loads of people there are just really, really ordinary people. It is obviously very celebrity focused on the one hand, but it's, cinema is, in France, in particular, It's really, really important cinema is, it's the national pastime. I mean, people just love cinema. And there were all kinds of people in the garden, you know and not all of them sort of dressed up. I was sort of saying, oh, I'm going to be the fattest woman in Cannes. I mean, certainly not, certainly not even the worst dressed woman in Cannes, you know? Yeah, it's a schizophrenic thing. On one hand, the festival is all about exclusivity. You can't buy a badge to attend. You got to apply for one. And depending on some secret cultural algorithm known only to the festival, they decide whether you're worthy of admission. And if you are what level of access you get. Some badges get you into everything, others barely anything. Your badge level also determines how early you get access to tickets for screenings which are free but you got to book in advance online. You know how by the time Taylor Swift tickets go on sale to the public, the VIPs have already bought every seat in the house. It's like that, but for the new Coppola flick. But then like Jane said, there's also this weirdly egalitarian side of Cannes. Every night, there are free public screenings on a giant screen set up on the beach. Tourists are free to swarm past the <i>Palais</i> and gawk at stars walking that red carpet, and locals go about their business like any work week, festival will be damned. As Vanity Fair magazine's chief movie critic Richard Lawson told me one day over a very expensive Cannes lunch. The other day I was waiting in line for a film and there was a crowd control barrier. Kind of taking up a parking spot. And this old man in a little car, parked the car in the middle of the street, got out, moved the crowd control barrier. Some Cannes employees were like, no, no, you can't park there. I mean, I'm surmising'cause I don't speak French. He yelled back at them, parked anyway, walked into a patisserie, came back out with an enormous cake, yelled at the Cannes people some more and then just walked around the corner and disappeared. It was the most French thing I've seen so far. But I'm always impressed by what to me is the festival's biggest nod to the little guy. A loophole that gives the 'average Joe' a shot at rubbing elbows with the glitterati. And it's on display all day long, right in front of the <i>Palais des Festival</i>. There on the sidewalk in morning drizzle or afternoon heat you'll find little crowds of people milling around wearing rented tuxes and gowns. They're not famous stars or directors, they're just film fans. Or sometimes maybe directors in the making like this guy. I'm Taylor Whitehead. I'm a film student at the University of Pennsylvania. And you're here in Cannes. How the hell did you get here? We, yeah, we've got a program where I guess about 30 students every summer, get to come to the festival and, you know, do the whole deal, beg for tickets for premiers and whatnot.- Which is what you're doing.- Which is exactly what I'm doing. You're the most elegant beggar I've ever seen. I try to be elegant when I'm begging. Taylor actually has to be elegant. See, he and all the other dapper folks around him are here hoping strangers will, gift them tickets to the premiere of the new Indiana Jones movie that night. And evening premieres are strictly black tie. So if Taylor scores, he's got to be dressed for the occasion. I'm going to describe for people who cannot see you sadly, you've got like the three piece tuxedo with the black tie and the black vest and the black pants. But a white dinner coat, pretty sweet. Matter of fact, it's exactly what Harrison Ford wore in <i>Temple of Doom</i>. Was this by design? Oh, yeah, I'm missing the red carnation'cause I guess they don't have those here. But yeah, that was intentional. That is one reason someone might want to gift Taylor a ticket. But there's another more selfish reason, the aforementioned loophole. My understanding is that if they don't use the ticket, the festival can ding them somehow. You can get in trouble the next time you ask for tickets. Yeah. Yeah, that's the deal. They've got a strike system where if you miss three things that you have tickets for without canceling more than I think a half hour before, then you're not allowed to get any more screenings for the rest of the festival. And there's some producers and directors and actors who are associated with films that get more than one ticket. And if they're only bringing one date, then they have extra tickets that they need to shed unless they want to be dinged in the future. We're hoping for that. You're hoping that somebody like is a procrastinator basically. Absolutely. Have you scored any tickets at the fest so far? Yeah. So this is day three of the festival. This is the third premiere and I was at the premiere last night and the night before so pretty good success rate so far. Which were, which movies? Last night was <i>Monster</i>. And the night before was<i>Jeanne du Barry</i>. That was the opening night festivities.- Yeah. Yeah, it was.- And you got in? Yeah. Yeah, I did. And they had the gorgeous opening ceremony beforehand. Ruben Östlund came and spoke. We saw the whole jury, Michael Douglas spoke and just-- There was a band that performed. It was an amazing experience. To put this in context that's roughly equivalent to a random film school kid on Hollywood Boulevard suddenly getting to attend the Academy Awards. I call that a win for the little guy. By the way, Taylor was there with some fellow students and it was pretty clear they'd be enjoying their evening, whether they scored tickets or not.- What's your name?- I'm Ella Morrison.- And who are you?- Daniel Kaplan. And unlike Taylor, you have wine. So, first of all, I didn't realize that you can carry alcohol in this town. I actually don't know if that's true. But we're doing it! Yeah, I don't actually know what the open container laws are in Cannes, but I can tell you one other place in town where folks sure act like there aren't any a place that among regular festival goers has near mythical status. A corner bar called Le Petit Majestic. If you're wandering Cannes city center after an evening screening, you'll hear it long before you see it. The sound of hundreds of people spilling out of the bar and around the corner talking in 10 different languages and drinking to excess. It's the kind of place where you always run into someone you know, and that's what happened a minute after I started recording. Hey! Oh my god, hi. How you doing? UK Critic and podcaster, Anna Bogutskaya one of only, like, three non-MUBI people I knew at Cannes last year. So of course, she magically appeared along with her buddy movie producer, Douglas Cox. I'll start with you. Where are we? We're at Le Petit Majestic in Cannes 2023. It is an extreme corner of Cannes where there seems to be a real concoction of individuals from all walks of life, all dressed to the nines, queuing for exorbitant amounts of time and really just enjoying it. It's pretty special. I've not seen much like it before. My understanding is this used to be a journalist spot. Is it still, do you know? I have no idea how the Petite became the Petite, but it is the beating spot after a certain point in the night where you could just show up here and everybody will show up. People just materialize out of nowhere. You bump into your friends you haven't seen in years. They're all queing for the same overpriced flat beer, but nobody really cares about the beer. It's all about the vibe. And honestly, this is so unsanitary and unsafe and yet it is the place to be after hours. You can, in one single crowd, rub shoulders with filmmakers, sales agents, executives, producers, journalists, podcasters, everyone is here and a hierarchy doesn't matter. And Cannes is all about hierarchy.- It's true.- In every single sense. And the Petite feels like it's the only place where that float goes out the window. This is, this is definitely a place that flattens the curve here. It's the French version of a Scottish cèilidh. Everyone is on a level, rosy cheeked, talking shit. I really love that it's like, somehow people still found the one dive in this, in like Richie Richards-- This would be like basically finding a dive bar in Beverly Hills and just hanging out outside, making a ruckus all night long and nobody seems to care. It doesn't, I don't really get it like how this is even allowed to exist. Well, it turns out compared to how it used to be the scene at the Majestic today is actually tame. My name is Rhonda Richford, I am a journalist. Rhonda Richford's based in Paris these days. She writes about Cannes for Women's Wear Daily, but back in the 2010s, she covered that beat for the Hollywood Reporter. And wrote about La Petite just as it got mired in the kind of drama you wouldn't expect from looking at it. So there's nothing to describe. It's like the most nondescriptive bar you could possibly imagine. It's a PMU which is a horse racing betting bar during the day. The floors are gray tiled, old plasticky laminate tables. There's a bar in the back that serves coffee and beer and really cheap wine. And then for some reason, it became the place to be during the film festival. And I think its peak was 2012 to 2016 where, I mean, it would just be, it's like thousands of people. It takes up two blocks coming out of this tiny place. The owner would roll out these mobile beer taps, he'd just roll them out in the street and he'd put them up and down like on the different corners and then everyone would stand on these corners and they would just sell from that. So they just basically like had cash bars all the way up the street. Yeah, like... 3-4 a.m. Like, who knows? And then now the city really clamped down on him in about 2017. So what happened? I mean, what was the, what was the tipping point? Well, I would say the tipping point was the election of the mayor. That'd be mayor David Lisnard elected in 2014. And his goal and dream was to clean up the city to turn it more into a Monaco type vibe, which is his very stated goal. He wanted to clean it up. He wanted to make it classy. That's what he always kept saying, like more classy, more upscale. And so he set out to shut this place down. I think for people to get a-- I mean, to me and I think to maybe people in general they think of the Cannes Film Festival as such a glamorous event. The idea that Cannes would need to be cleaned up, it seems bizarre. It's on the Riviera. It's on the French Riviera. I don't think we think of it as you know, some sort of Mos Eisley space port of France. Well, Cannes actually had a really big crime problem. The film festival was a hotbed of crime. They say art imitates life. Nowhere more so than this year's Cannes Film Festival where hours after a movie about jewel thieves was premiered, a million dollars worth of jewels was stolen. So, yeah, that was 2013. The thieves swiped a bunch of Chopard jewels out of a hotel safe during Cannes the same night, Sophia Coppola's heist flick <i>The Bling Ring</i> screened. Turns out when you bring lots of rich famous people to a festival not to mention thousands of jetlagged, distracted film workers, journalists and tourists, burglars follow. Gangs would come in from Marseille and pickpocket and people would break into the big villas that are in the hills where they knew high profile people were staying. Things got shady enough during Cannes that Rhonda wrote a 2014 piece listing places in town not to go into wee hours. Including Le Petit. That's the year the new mayor had CCTV cameras installed all over Cannes and started trying to shut the bar down. Which I think he kind of backed down on and now they can still stay open but they have to close by 2 a.m. and he can only sell from inside now. He can't roll out his carts. And the police come and like are getting everyone out at 1:30 like they are, they're on it. I will still say though that it's like those who have ever been to the UK at quittin' time and it's like every pub there's just people spilling out into the street. The Petite, I still feel like the Petite is still like that times ten. But it's, you know, it's not the same. But I mean, the town is, look I mean, the flipside of that is you go down there now and you're like, oh, yeah, the street is a lot cleaner like he achieved his goal.- The mayor.- The mayor, yeah. Sunday May 21st, 2023. My last day in Cannes. And I caught back up with the Ecumenical Jury's Jane Stranz, outside a church for a party mayor Lisnard would have surely approved of. So we're in Rue Notre Dame in the center of Cannes. The three Catholic members of the Ecumenical Jury went to mass this morning and we three protestant members came to the protestant service here. Any moment now, people will come out of the Roman Catholic church and we're going to have a short drink together. I have to say, have a drink is, um, often wine in France. But I see that it's mainly water and fruit juice here. So that's good, yeah. So how's your Cannes been going? Oh, well, I mean, I'm just, I mean, I'm tired but it's amazing. I think I've seen now 9 or 10 of the 21 films that are in competition and there's a message in almost everything that we're watching. I will say, and I've mentioned this to other people that I've interviewed at this festival this year. There is a preponderance of movies that seem like they are about choosing to live a life that is maybe different than the norm apart from some of the bad parts of the modern world, if that's too simple a way to say it. I think that what I can see is that there's something about the struggles of individuals to find meaning in life. There's also the idea of an individual trying to say I can't accept these, these criteria that society seems to be imposing on me. But on the other hand, I think there's also this idea of, are we able to do something together collectively? How do we find a way forward together? And that's... that's the big theme of our time, of course. And now here's the thing, it's true, a lot of movies touched on those themes at last year's Cannes. But really, when I was talking to Jane just then I was thinking of one movie in particular and I'm pretty positive she was thinking of it too. Because a few days later, the Ecumenical Jury gave it their prize. It's about a Japanese man who lives a life of simplicity and happiness, cleaning public toilets for a living. It's called <i>Perfect Days</i> directed by... Wim Wenders. So we are now only, only concentrating on what we say and not how we look while we say it. Exactly. The other week, I got a chance to talk to him about it. While I was at Cannes last year, I was also in addition to interviewing filmmakers, I was also collecting sound for an episode about the Ecumenical Jury. And after I left Cannes it turns out you win the Ecumenical Jury Prize. That was actually the first thing that happened that day, the last day of the festival, in the morning, we got a call. We have to go to the Ecumenical Jury and they have a surprise for us and we did win their prize. And that was a beautiful thing. That's-- this is the second time you've won it, right? With <i>Paris, Texas</i> also. So I felt this was a good sign. Are you, are you consciously seeking something spiritual in your films? I mean, you've made movies about angels, you've made a movie about Pope Francis. Is this something you're going for? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's why I like my hero, Yasujirō Ozu his movies are deeply spiritual, even if they're not in any way Christian or whatever. And they are not preaching, I mean, they are stories and they are family stories, but they're deeply spiritual movies. It's true, I think speaking of that, it's interesting that this movie which seems so Buddhist in many ways, when I've spoken to you about it, you've mentioned, you know, living in the moment, that kind of very Buddhist concept that this movie won a Christian prize. And this is actually the third time in six years. I noted that a Japanese film has won it. And the country of Japan isn't predominantly Christian. What do you think is going on there? But the country does have a very deep spiritual basis. The fact that the common good is such a highly developed sense is due to that. Anybody who's traveled to Japan gets it and feels it and wants to come back because of it. I once had a visit of an American friend there. I was working in Tokyo for the end sequences of <i>Until the End of the World</i>. I was there for several months, and my American friend came visiting me. He was there for the first time. And he said, "well, there are all these people out in the street wearing masks..." and that was 1990, this was not a pandemic."Why are they all so paranoid to catch cold or what?" I said, "No, my dear,"they are not paranoid."They are sick and they want to protect others not to catch it." And he looked, he stopped and looked at me and said, "You're crazy."No, I don't believe that."They're doing it for others?" I said,"Yes. Exactly. That's the difference. There you go." There's Jane Stranz's favorite theme again, spirituality in the form of community. People coming together to get through tough times. And it occurs to me that's what people do in a good church, or dive bar, or cinema, or a festival where everyone applauds a work of art together for 22 minutes straight. A lot about Cannes is ridiculous. But a lot of it gives me hope. And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week. Shout out to anyone listening while they're at, on their way to, or returning from Cannes. If you want to hear more from Wim Wenders about <i>Perfect Days</i> check out our last episode featuring my full interview with the Maestro himself. You can also stream<i>Perfect Days</i> on MUBI in the UK, India, Latin America and many other countries. And for good measure we've also got a selection of great films on there from previous Cannes festivals. Movies by everyone from Godard to Ruben Östlund. Check the show notes for details. Meanwhile, let's roll the credits this episode was hosted written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano. Ciara McEniff is our producer, Stephen Colon mastered it. Yuri Suzuki composed our theme music. All the other music was composed by Martin Austwick, except the track <i>Blueprint</i> by Jahzzar, courtesy of Tribe of Noise. Special thanks this week to David Harper and Kat Kowalczyk. This show is executive produced by me along with Jon Barrenechea Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman, and Michael Tacca. And finally for the best in cinema, head to MUBI.com to start watching. Thanks for listening, travel safe and <i>vive le cinéma</i>.