Cannes movie market is turning 60 … and it’s as vibrant as ever … With buyers and sellers coming across the globe.
Cannes Film Festival features actresses, climbing stairs, and paparazzi. But this is just the tip of an iceberg.
Underneath the million-dollar budgets of blockbusters lies another world. Production crew coming from all over the world meet here to sell movies, technologies, and services.
Most movies at the festival’s Movie Market are low-budget features with no big-name actors attached—often horrors, thrillers, drama, or animation.
Basically, the whole of Cannes is a movie market, from the restaurants to the movie rooms, buyers and sellers are meeting each other. Some movies are screened in specific rooms or theaters, alongside other films competing for awards.
And that means a lot of movies. In what is one of the biggest movie markets in the world, it’s thousands of movies. In 2013 alone, producers, distributors, financiers, video-on-demand providers and other representatives from 1000 companies and 108 countries (including places as far-flung as Albania and French Guiana) came together to bargain over 5,364 films.
In the Sixties, this market was criticized by those who thought that Cannes shouldn’t be about business. But in a way, this element helps to give every movie its chance to succeed. Here, in this market, anyone looking can find their very own rare pearl.
