The Cannes film festival - the world’s greatest movie showcase - celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.
AFP asked actors and directors who made their names at the festival to recount their highs and lows at the star-studded event.
Robert De Niro
Hollywood veteran Robert De Niro, who says he’s probably been to Cannes eight or nine times, admits he still savours “the glamour of it, the excitement of it”.
“One year I remember - when I was doing 1900 with Gerard Depardieu - Gerard and I drove there and I met Marty Scorsese - we were about to do Taxi Driver (1976),” he said.
“Both Gerard and I were staying at the Carlton, they found us a little room because there was nothing else available - he and I in small rooms at the Carlton.”
In 2011, he chaired the jury, an honour awarded for an outstanding career.
“Being president of the jury was a lot of fun. I hope they ask me to do it again. I don’t know how many years you have to wait.”
Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar, Spain’s most celebrated living movie director who is this year heading the festival jury, first attended Cannes in 1983 with his Labyrinth of Passion.
“There weren’t many people watching it, Madrid and the ‘Movida’ hadn’t yet made an impact abroad,” he recalls, referring to the creative movement which emerged following the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
Despite the film’s reception, the experience of being at Cannes was “very exciting” with Almodovar watching works by Michelangelo Antonioni and French writer Robert Bresson.
“I sat really far away from the screen in the back rows of the theatre. But I got a great deal out of it. And I was happy.
“I felt like I’d reached the top.”
Nabil Ayouch
This French-Moroccan director made his debut at Cannes in 2012 when his film Les Chevaux de Dieu (Horses of God) was shown in the sidebar category Un Certain Regard.
The best moment for him was the look in the eyes of the main actor when they got there - a young man who was born in a slum who told him his lifelong dream was to act and go to Cannes with Horses of God.
“At the time, I told him that he was getting ahead of himself... But he was right.”
Three years later, Ayouch was back at the festival with Much Loved - a film about prostitution in Marrakesh that was banned back home on grounds it damaged the country’s image.
Such was the backlash the film’s lead actress, Loubna Abidar, was attacked in the streets and forced to take refuge in France.
“I’ve always compared Cannes to a theatre: the play being performed is dangerous because it is closely watched. While Much Loved generated a lot of love in Cannes, another version was playing out in Morocco but the score was one of hatred.”
Maria de Medeiros
Pulp Fiction was the film which first brought this Portuguese actress to Cannes where it won the Palme d’Or in 1994.
“It was incredible! I felt like I’d been swept up by a tsunami!
“Over time, I learnt to appreciate the festival and enjoy things which had initially scared me: the media whirlwind, the stress, the crazy pace.”
Six years later, she returned as a director of April Captains, which was competing in the sidebar category “Un certain regard”.
“One of my best memories is being a member of the jury (in 2007). That’s the best way to discover outstanding films.”
Claude Lelouch
French director Claude Lelouch first attended Cannes in 1959, arriving directly from a military base while on leave. He was denied entry for wearing a uniform and had to sneak in through an emergency exit. He says he picked the right film to see, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, which won the Palme d’Or that year.
But his best memory is of winning the Palme d’Or in 1966 for A Man and A Woman.
“Cannes is the most beautiful place in the world, and the worst, too, for showing a film,” he says. “It’s like a casino: you win or you lose.”
“There is no halfway with Cannes. I’ve known the worst and the best there, I know what I’m talking about,” he added. “Today, all the great directors dream of presenting a film. It’s not for nothing it’s the biggest festival in the world.”
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Twenty years ago, Chadian film director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun spent 11 hours on a train from the French southwest city of Bordeaux to get his first taste of Cannes. It was May 1997 and he only had one night.
He was able to get an invite to a screening by Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian film director, and enter the Grand Theatre Lumiere.
“You have the feeling of walking in slow motion, as if time was standing still,” he said. “The vastness of the hall. To reach my seat, on the last row, I needed to climb the endless staircase”.
Once seated, about 20 metres (65 feet) off the ground, Haroun turned his head and was struck with “vertigo” and “nausea,” but as soon as the lights went off, “I forgot everything.”
Haroun won the Jury Prize in 2010 for A Screaming Man, and his first reaction was to raise his head to those sitting in the nosebleed seats.
“I wanted to believe that among them was a young director watching the show with his head full of dreams”.
Brillante Mendoza
Filipino director Brillante Mendoza has many happy memories from Cannes: The first time he trod the red carpet in 2008 when his movie Serbis competed for the Palme d’Or or his victory as best director in 2009 for Kinatay.
But his favourite memory is still his first appearance at Cannes in 2007 when his movie, Foster Child was screened at the Director’s Fortnight.
“The mere fact that they chose me was already overwhelming because at the time, there were only three Filipino [directors] who made it to Cannes and it had been almost 20 years since the last one,” he said.
“I didn’t realise after the screening there would be a standing ovation. I could not believe it. I was a bit embarrassed. I had to stand up and then sit down but every time I sat down, the clapping became louder.”
“I got a bit emotional, I cried. I couldn’t believe what was happening. After that, it took me a long time to control my emotions,” he said.
Albert Serra
Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra was just 19 when he first went to Cannes with a bunch of friends on a whim when the festival was on, long before he even thought of making films. Without any accreditation, they couldn’t get in and spent the time wandering around the city.
More than a decade later, he was back and this time he did get in - with his low-budget “Quixotic/Honor de Cavelleria” running in the 2006 Director’s Fortnight.
What surprised him was the vast and impressive scale of the event - and the fact that “everyone is walking around in tuxedos”.
“I feel great there because there’s no snobbery. You share different moments with loads of people, including famous people, in the most natural way...
“Oddly enough, Cannes has this anarchic side. Everyone I’ve met there, like Catherine Deneuve, has been really nice.”
Yousry Nasrallah
One of Egypt’s best-known directors, Yousry Nasrallah has been a well-known face at Cannes for decades, first as a critic and then as a director with Summer Thefts, which ran in the 1988 Director’s Fortnight.
“When you go with one of your own films, it’s much more nerve-racking, much more work. People think it’s all for show, that you go to Cannes just to be photographed, that it’s all about the jet-set but it’s not at all.
“Cannes is a lot of work, it’s really tough.
“Cannes is a huge machine which can take you up to the clouds and which can also crush you. You’re a star for 36 hours and they move on to the next person.”
Before his days as a director, Nasrallah was a regular visitor to the festival as a critic, meeting Federico Fellini in 1980 when he presented “City of Women”.
“My best memory is when I was a critic, watching City of Women at 8.30 am, having the chance to meet Fellini and have coffee with him. That was extraordinary.”
“Fellini was very entertaining, someone who was very simple and communicative and also very funny, who immediately put you at ease and told you impossible stories about the cinema - always a bit exaggerated, clown-like, just great.”
Three years later, he came back with legendary Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and met French director Robert Bresson: “one of the great gods of cinema”.
“For someone who wants to make films, to have rubbed shoulders with and even met and had tea and polite conversation with people like that, it gives you a sense of: This is it, I can do it. I can be a filmmaker.”
