“It still feels like Cannes to the degree that you’re still seeing/interacting with many of the same people,” one longtime festivalgoer told TheWrap. “But it doesn’t feel like the festival has taken over the city. Rather, it exists within it, a big change from the past.”
If the festival hasn’t taken over the city, it’s because social events have been cut back, the Marche du Film market is a fraction of its usual size and journalists from China, India and Australia have, for the most part, stayed home. The huge posters that usually hang from the luxury beachside hotels are missing this year; so too, said one attendee, are “Middle Eastern playboys ripping up and down the Croisette in luxury vehicles.”