We Went to Cannes! These Are the 10 Best (and Worst) Things We Saw.

Cannes isn’t a festival—it’s a high-stakes performance art piece where every red carpet step is choreographed, every press conference scripted, and every film premiere a calculated spectacle. Sean Phetasy and Amanda Dobbins reveal that the most powerful cinematic moments at Cannes didn’t come from the Palme d’Or contenders, but from defiantly unclassifiable works like Jordan Firstman’s raw queer coming-of-age tale *Club Kid* and Ritesh Hamaguchi’s 196-minute emotional autopsy of elder care in *All of a Sudden*. These films, born outside the elite competition, delivered authenticity that the festival’s glossy machinery often obscures. Yet the contradictions are relentless: a Michael Bay-style action fever dream masquerading as drama, an AI-generated Soderbergh documentary on John Lennon that undermines its own message, and a French soul-transference thriller so surreal it left audiences debating philosophy in the dark. The real magic, they argue, isn’t in the awards—it’s in the chaos: the 20+ films seen across 12 theaters, the spontaneous conversations with fellow cinephiles, the exhaustion that fuels revelation. Even misfires like *Gentle Monster*—criticized for exploitative framing—prove the festival’s willingness to confront uncomfortable truths, while American films like *Paper Tiger* and *Club Kid* signal a quiet but meaningful shift in Cannes’ traditionally Eurocentric DNA.