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Cannes is getting empty. Inside of the palace many companies or organizations are already gone. Other are busy packing or try to catch a last film too. Some others like me try to meet and speak to festival representatives or a distributor who happens to be still here. I approach them with care and respect, because I don't want to bother them if they are packing, but many of them make time the minute I show them the brochure of DIS. My business card is right now not representative as our brochure but they don't mind. Today I walk around, say goodbye to my new friends and use the last moments to ask a little more attention for our film. In my mind lessons I learn, inspirations I gather and the ideas I have running around like a firework. I wrote many things down, but still!

Meeting great people is always inspiring. It gives an extra boost, especially when they are exactly how you imagined them. That is my feeling when I meet and talk to Ally Derks, the director of IDFA: very down to earth and kind but at the same time you can see a lot of fire and determination in her eyes. I always admire her for doing such a fantastic job with one of the most important documentary festivals of the world.
Our meeting is short but very effective. I tel her about my two ideas for IDFA.  and we plan to meet again in Amsterdam. As we in Dutch would say: my day could not be better (mijn dag kan niet meer stuk!)

I am so excited about meeting Ally Derks that I am almost late for my next meeting and as it is not bad enough, I can't find my business card anywhere. The minute after I say goodby and leave the meeting I find them in the place where they should be and why I didn't saw them during our meeting, I wouldn't know. I send het immediately a message and apologize for the messy impression. She found it wonderful, she wrote.

While I’m walking to the next place for the next appointment, I enjoy the view of the sea. and the selfies are coming up too!
Yesterday it was one the warmest days during my stay at Cannes. Today I wear a lighter dress and to my surprise the day appears to be cold. Of course it is still a beautiful day and the sun shines every now and then. I am very much satisfied with my meetings and it doesn't matter it rains or it is sunny, the day is beautiful as long as you are happy. And I am happy, really happy for Dance Iranian Style. I am so proud that my first visit on Cannes must be because of this wonderful film made by the love of so many people. I hope I can make them proud by finding DIS a wonderful home.

Today is a good day! Not because the sun shines. The sun shines here every day, so the first days you notice that and you are very excited about it, but after a couple of days it becomes normal.
Today is a good day because I meet very nice people and the workshops are pretty awesome. I haven’t seen a single film yet and to be honest I don’t miss it at all. It is crazy because I used to be a die-hard festival addict with five and sometimes even six films per day. Now I find the workshops, the seminars and the events more interesting. Perhaps because I also know that the most of the films at Cannes are going to be seen in the cinemas.

I miss a film I had a ticket for, because there is a really good seminar at Canadian pavilion where the panel members tells us about the co-production with Canada and the benefits of it. After that at the Doc Corner we meet the director of TIFF and he tells us about how to apply a film to his festival, how to handle when you are a first feature director/producer and I get a compliment from him and the audience for a very delicate question. I’m sure you are curious about my question, but I have to tell you about the whole seminar to be able to tell my question and I’m not going to bore you with all that. 

As I said before, today is a good day. I get to know some of of talents from Arab Cinema at Marina show and every time I say goodbye to the one, I say hello to the next one.  I’ve run out of my business cards and have to write down my email address for seven eight times in an hour. I also meet Philip Rashid in person and it feels we already know each other for a long time. Talented guy!

It’s about seven o’clock when me and Fleur, who already got me an invitation for Producers Network party’ go for a drink. It’s not a dancing party, these are always at late nights. This party is a networking party, where everybody tries to sell his thing, whether it is a film project, a finished film, facilities for the film making or something related to the film making. I go along!

Cannes is mainly about who you know and who knows you! 
There are many beautiful films at the Cannes Film Festival, but according to a French photo journalist, who covers The Cannes for her magazine every year for about 25 years, Cannes is mainly about who you know and who knows you!  And that brings me to Natalie Portman: Would you, could you say NO to her? 

Back to the business. Today I take the holy book of Marche du Film Guide with me (it's so heavy!) to learn more about the participants of the Cannes. There are more than 80 Dutch companies/organisations present at the Cannes 2015. it is amazing. I don't even know some of them, but it is handy to learn more about them and let them to get to know me too while i'm here. I am secretly (not a secret any more!) proud of my place among them. 

I am very tired today. An early night isn't it, but the sooner I sleep the better I perform tomorrow. But before sleeping I want to share with you the view that I enjoy every night while i'm waiting for the bus to go back to my room. 

This is what I hate the most; the moments within a terrible feeling of belonging to nowhere. Luckily it just happens sometimes and this morning is one of those moments.  Every time I walk to an Iranian stand, there is a polite but cold and aloof feeling, I can guess their thoughts: there she is, the Iranian woman who doesn't live in Iran anymore and so she doesn't belong to us any more. The same happens when I walk to a Dutch stand: there she is, the Iranian woman who happens to live in the Netherlands and to speak our language but she doesn't belong with us. She remains the foreigner for ever! Funny that this must happen today when I actually should be very happy with the day.

Today I learn many things about theatrical screening on demand, a very successful way of screening art house movies in Canada, US and Australia. The bad news is that I hear at the end of the session that the Amstelfilm initiative 'We want cinema' which follows more or less the same way is stopping soon. It seems that it is not working well in the Netherlands. It is sad to hear but i'm not surprised at all. I still don't know why but the same goes for the crowdfunding in the Netherlands. It works of course for small projects and small amount of money but still without a success for big projects. I spoke to a guy from Denmark who made three feature films just by crowdfunding. He gathered every time a budget of almost two million dollars. I was shocked. I remember our four months of hard and at the end unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign for Dance Iranian Style just for 30 thousand euro.  I still hear from, so called, friends complaining about my update-mails every two weeks. They are the one who actually never paid a penny and never supported our film in any way. And they also have never heard of the word UNSUBSCRIBE! that helps them get rid of my emails in a minute.  Alright, I have just got to get it off my chest. Enough wining!

Today I talked to four buyers. They were interested in our material. I have a followup meeting with two of them and the other two want to see the whole film first. An Iranian distributor who approaches me himself for a talk about our film advises me not to make an art house movie any more and specially not a human rights related movie. He says that there is no market for it at all.  'People around the world are tired of films with humanistic subjects,' he says. 'Everybody wants to have fun.' When I tell him that my next feature movie is going to be a Bollywood film (joke!), he immediately gives me his business card and makes me promise to contact him as soon as I begin with the production. He even gives me his private email address in case I cannot reach him on his business address.  The only condition he has is that the film must have a happy ending. Not like A Separation a foggy unclear ending which gives people a bad feeling. But he won a Oscar, I say.  Yaaaa, he was lucky, but not everyone can get away with such a film, and he certainly didn't deserve it, he says. I loved it, I say.  He doesn't answer me, but suddenly he has a urgent meeting that he has to attend to.  It was though much fun talking to him.

After a long day meetings and talking I got a surprise invitation at the Fortissimo Film where I meet my dear Niloufar and Aydin and many other interesting people.  There is drinks and nice food but when I see delicious gherkins, I forget all about the other food. i love gherkins and Im not even pregnant, hahaha.

The storm is getting heavy when I walk to the bus stop heading home. The weather reminds me of Dutch weather. There is rain in the air and it is chilly when I get off of the bus. 

Now, I say 'sleep well' to you all, my dear friends in the Netherlands and around the world and hope to tell you more tomorrow.

PS Sorry not much pictures today. Tomorrow more :) 

On Wednesday may the 13th at 17.00 o’clock I arrive in Cannes. It is a fantastic spring weather and watching people walking around in short sleeves and short skirts and trousers seem unreal.  It felt like a dream, now is a reality. Months of preparation. It began with just a simple registration, but taking part to Marche du Film Cannes takes more than just a registration. Everything should be ready. Designing poster and dvd cover, printing some, uploading everything including the whole film on #Cinando and booking a hotel, tickets and answering about forty emails and setting meetings and appointments everyday while life is not just about Cannes only and there are more things to be done.

Finally everything is ready thanks to enormous effort of our director Farshad Aria by making two beautiful trailers of the film, a fantastic dvd cover/ poster, uploading film, pictures over and over again and filling many forms.

And after many sleepless nights and long days and not to forget hours of traveling ( Cannes seems to be at the next corner, but truly it took me 11 hours from a to z to be here.

In Nice at the bus stop to Cannes there is a huge line. Everybody goes to Cannes Festival, everybody is excited but more than that tired of travelling. A TV journalists is running between the passengers and Nice own habitants asking people about Film Festival Cannes and showing them big pictures of Sean Penn and Quentin Tarantino and asking if they know them. Of course all the travelers know them, and to my surprise almost none of the habitants.

In the bus to Cannes I try to enjoy the beautiful nature that passes me through the windows, I can’t! I am too tired and fall in sleep. And believe me I am not the only one!

The first thing I notice in Cannes are the people in beautiful dresses heading to the Festival Palace. It reminds me of Iranian New year,’ Norouz’ when everybody walks around in beautiful gowns and dresses.

It is busy, very busy and the security people seem to be in charge.  I have seen the pictures of the festival so many time, I don’t even need to ask where should I be. I walk to the Festival Palace to get my badges and information. There is again a huge line but soon I have my badge and a heavy bag full of information. I wonder where I should get the time to read all these books. 

The opening is in an hour, I sneak to the press balcony where I have a good view on the red carpet, but I lost interest soon. I know that Cannes is not just about the films only, unfortunately, but that other side of the festival is is not part of my world.

Outside of the palace is super busy with people who try to take a view of the red carpet and its stars.   But what strikes my attention is a big group of  pretty girls in beautiful dresses who hold a paper board with the text: Invitation Please! It took me a couple of minutes to get the meaning behind this action.  These girls did everything to get a ticket to the opening show and I think, by the look of it, some of them can be very lucky. 

I walk away from the palace with my heavy baggage and a huge amount of information and heading to my first appointment at the Majesty Hotel.  The street is much busier than before and the security guys have only eyes for the celebs. The rest should wait, even the pretty girls in pretty dresses. I feel lost in this chaos!