By Jules Koroleva Sipping Provence rose with ice at a Croisette cafe I'm looking back at my very first Cannes Festival experience which Diana Krasovska kindly asked me to share with the publication. I love South of France generally. Now I love it even more at this particular time of the year - Festival time. This is where you can combine business and pleasure, have meetings in temporary beach offices and enjoy the numerous parties after a long day of talking to industry professionals, attending seminars, and watching movies.
My short film 1 Soul 2 TimeZones was selected in the Short Corner which is pretty good for the first film done on almost no budget within a week. It is now been submitted to other festivals I'd also love to attend. Apart from presenting the film, my aim was to find co-production partners for my feature film The Sandplay. It is a romantic drama set partly in Russia, my home country. The story of a girl forced to look for happiness within herself rather then externally, evolves around the Sandplay psychotherapy sessions, a method established by Carl G Jung. I wrote it and was blessed to have Sam Boseley, the award winning UK writer and Billion To One lead writer, editing it.
Of course, I also used my time in Cannes to spread the word about Billion To One - our fascinating project that I have total faith in.
Apart from hard work I got to see a few movie premieres:
- In the name of my daughter by Andre Techine featuring always amazing Catherine Deneuve. Though I am more into romantic tear-jerkers or comedies I absolutely loved the movie. Brilliantly directed, it takes us to beautiful locations of South France, deeply explores psychology of relationships.
- One Day, Two Nights by the Dardenne brothers, starring Marion Cotillard and Fabrizio Rongione. It made me feel like I was present in the house of the characters, which is I guess the whole idea of this very close to real life movie. The mother of the family is fluctuating from stressed to depressed throughout the movie because of being about to lose a job and betrayed by some of her colleagues. I was trying hard to connect with the characters but I didn’t manage. Instead I kept wondering why she couldn’t just start looking for a new job in the very beginning of the film. She did in the very end! The actors were wonderful though.
- Queen and Country by John Boorman starring Callum Turner screened as a part of Directors' Fortnight selection. Insight into the military life, humorous in a British way and full of romance. I wish it didn't end. I missed Grace of Monaco which I wanted to see most in spite of bad and really bad reviews, which I don't particularly trust especially in cases concerning royal families' stories. Well, I've ordered a DVD!
Anyway, I'll leave the movie reviews to professionals like Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian film critic, who was one if the judges giving a speech at Palm Dog, an extravagant addition to all the standard awards. My dog Bobik enjoyed attending. He has never had that many pictures of him taken in his 7 months life. 
The highlight of my Festival was meeting my CollabFeature colleagues from Paris - Ingrid Franchi, a filmmaker and an actress, Yoann Sover acting as Billy and Etienne Gaudillere acting as Antoinne in the series. Two teenage girls asked Yoann for an autograph and a photo while we were having coffee which was very sweet!
Now I'll be working on maintaining the precious contacts I got and see where my 2 weeks of Cannes take me professionally this year.
www.1soul2timezones.com www.omyjules.wordpress.com Twitter @oMyJules
Photos by Rob Aft