In the spring I took a course called “The Cannes Film Festival: Study and Experiential Learning Excursion.” For the semester we studied the history and politics of film festivals, and I learned to analyze movies from historical and cultural contexts that I was unfamiliar with. It was a rewarding experience—and honestly my first exposure to a lot of international film cultures. The best part though came in the summer when our classes got to actually attend the Cannes Film Festival in France!
The Cannes Film Festival is an invitation-only event, and students can only attend if their university applies for accreditation. With that said, it’s really exciting the Film and Media Studies department at Hopkins offers an opportunity for us to learn about global cinema in a hands-on way. I was drawn to the course because film festivals are not only a celebration of art but are also inherently a networking event. As someone interested in the marketing of films, meeting journalists, distributors, and people on the business side at the festival gave me insights into the inner workings of the industry and their careers.
The festival was also a crash course into global cinema for me. I learned to engage with forms of filmmaking I was unfamiliar with and watch movies that likely will never make their way to the United States. One of the big lessons I took away from the festival was to be open-minded about what I watch. Some of my favorite premieres included: “Sister Midnight” (dir. Karan Kandhari), “The Apprentice” (dir. Ali Abbasi), and “The Substance” (dir. Coralie Fargeat). And while some of the movies I enjoyed I’ve gotten to rewatch in theaters in Baltimore, “Sister Midnight” has not been distributed in the United States. I went to see that movie because I noticed the line to get last-minute tickets was not that long. The film is in Hindi, and I believe they forgot to turn on English captioning so I watched this movie somewhat blind, with the assistance of the French captioning that I could understand maybe 10% of. Yet the cinematography and expressive acting carried the story, and I found myself laughing and crying throughout.
During our time in Cannes, we had a lot of freedom over what events we went to. I saw around 20 films over the course of 10 days and attended interviews with filmmakers, including “Star Wars” director George Lucas and Italian actress and director Valeria Golino.
Not all my time was spent cooped up in dark theaters though. All the venues were a few feet away from the water, and there were even public screenings of revival Studio Ghibli films right on the beach.
Unless I create a film that makes its way to Cannes (fingers crossed), this was quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When I made the decision to attend Hopkins, I never would have expected to end up spending my summer watching movies on the French Riviera. This class is one of the many reasons I’m so happy I decided to go to Hopkins!
