Booking Cannes Tickets: A Saga
The ups and downs of trying to get yourself to a Cannes premiere.
It’s a weird system, in my opinion. I’m sure someone smarter, whose actual job it is to organise these things, has very fair reasons as to why this particular system is in place, but I still find it weird.
First of all, to get tickets to Cannes screenings you need to hold a specific type of pass; tickets are basically unavailable for the general public, but there are cinephile passes, so in theory anyone could go for one those, although I think they also have certain requirements you’d have to meet. If you’re an accredited professional (a fairly simple type of accreditation to get in my opinion, I didn’t go through any thorough background checks or anything oddly particular like that), then booking tickets to all screenings, including galas and premieres, is free, but it’s on a first come, first serve basis. I’ll get to that.
The professional accreditation fee might seem steep compared to other festivals (about a 4:1 ratio, I’d estimate), but — because there’s a ridiculous variety of events and pavilions in Cannes (I really mean that - there are like twenty things going on at the same time, any time, for 10 days) and because all film tickets come available with your accreditation, the sum is actually fair enough in my opinion. For example, booking tickets for BFI premieres (those are open to the public) have a separate fee and if you book one screening a day for the whole duration of BFI Film Fest, you’ll probably end up spending more than the price of Cannes accreditation.
Getting tickets for Cannes screenings is like the Hunger Games.
Cannes does not release all tickets at the same time. In fact, they’ll make tickets available exactly four days before the day of the screening at exactly 7:00am CEST, so 6:00am here in the UK. If you want to book tickets for any screening on a Monday, the only time to do so is at 6:00am on Thursday. For tickets on Tuesday, booking is 6:00am on a Friday. And so on, for each separate day.
Day 1.
I really wanted to go to Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s Scorsese, and an experience once in a lifetime. So, I got up at 5:45am on Tuesday to book tickets to that gala, which is on Saturday. I’m not a morning person, so this wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience.
When you enter the Cannes online ticket office, in the case of high traffic (every time I’ve tried to book so far), you’re put in an online queue.
My big mistake here (I admit - this is on me) was not getting up the day before to test how the system worked exactly. I didn’t know you need to refresh the online ticket office to get in the queue and then not refresh once you’re in the queue. Most importantly, I didn’t know that the 6:00am ticket release is a lie! - it’s more like 5:55am or 5:57am. So I refreshed at around 5:59am, just to see how it works, and then I was immediately in the queue, but I didn’t get through, as I imagine most people queued up a few minutes before me and got through quicker. Real bummer.
Day 2.
I know how it works now, so I’m on it - I’ll keep refreshing the page from 5:53am until I get through. My phone has the booking page of the particular film I’m trying to see open (in this case, that’s Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, an indie I don’t expect to attract as much traffic as Killers of the Flower Moon) and my laptop has the entire day programme open, in case I need to improvise and book something else.
I was placed in the queue immediately this time, but for some reason, once the page eventually refreshed to allow me to book, How to Have Sex was already sold out - I’m not sure if there were very few tickets or if somehow, people got all of them before me. I then made a grave mistake - there were tickets available for maybe 2-3 other films in that day, but I decided to look over the programme quickly before booking, and by the time I had decided what to see (maybe 30 seconds later?), everything was sold out again.
Keep in mind, there are probably (I’m ballparking here) at least a couple of thousand tickets that become available each day, and each day they are all gone in less than 120 seconds.
Day 3.
I’m ready. A little discouraged, but there’s no way I’m going to Cannes and not seeing at least one film.
5:45am alarm. I drag myself closer to the internet router (a helpful tip!) and do the same thing as yesterday - start refreshing the online ticket office page from 5:53am, both on my phone and laptop.
I refresh, I refresh, I refresh, I’m in the queue. I wait a couple of minutes, and then! -
And there it is - a shiny, golden, inviting BOOK button. Not the usual violent red SOLD OUT banner, but a beautiful welcoming clickable BOOK - I press it. And it’s done. Sam Levinson, here I come - The Idol should be fun.
What still confuses me is that in theory, nothing was different on day 3 than day 2, so I don’t know why I got through one of those days and not the other. Maybe there’s more people trying to book on Saturdays and Sundays - which doesn’t make much sense to me, because Cannes doesn’t seem like a place that has more things going on in the weekend, everyone is there for more than the weekend anyway - but maybe. Maybe I was just lucky, who knows.
Tomorrow I’m trying again. I think I’ll be smart though - I could go for Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, but I think everyone will be going to that, so chances of getting through are thinner, so I might go for some smaller indie at the same time as Asteroid City and try my chances with that. I will keep you updated.
If anyone ever finds this newsletter in the future who is trying to book Cannes tickets and you need more information and tips, please do get in touch. I had to figure all this out myself with trial and error, so I would gladly walk you through the process if you needed me to.