Twice before, my sister Margaret has called me over FaceTime with no advance warning. The first occasion was to tell me she was getting married; the second was to tell us she had cancer. (She’s fine!) So when a third FaceTime came in last month out of nowhere, I knew instantly that the news would be either very bad or very good. I could’ve made a thousand guesses either way, but “her movie got into the Cannes Film Festival” would not have been on the list.
Now, Margaret is my favorite person in the world. She’s already quite accomplished, improbably making it from a rural Texas high school to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU—then later, all the way to Dublin for a master’s in playwriting.1 That being said, I’m not always sure what my sister’s *deal* is. Some artists apply their creative talents with laser-like focus. Margaret is more like a creative fire hose. She’s worked on everything from a radio drama to a one-woman stage production to a short documentary about cow costumes. She’s lived everywhere from New York to Nashville to our Granny’s old house near Fort Worth. At some point she and her husband Stephen moved to Louisville KY, and I would need to pause my writing and go ask them to remind me why they did that.
So it’s both surprising and unsurprising that she’s lately drifted toward filmmaking, writing a sci-fi short and then directing her first-ever production—a little ten-minute movie called “Poof.” As is typical with short films, Margaret’s producer submitted “Poof” to a ton of film festivals. To everyone’s absolute shock, out of some 5,000 short-film submissions, hers was one of the dozen or so to be selected to Cannes.
Traveling to Cannes on a few weeks’ notice is wildly expensive, but to miss it was out of the question. We yelled at booking.com to shut up and take our money2 and on Friday the 26th took the two-hour flight to Nice, my first visit to the fabled South Of France™. There was a minor tragedy when we realized we wouldn’t arrive until after Margaret’s official screening on Friday afternoon. But we had a consolation prize: Margaret had been invited to a special ceremony for women filmmakers, and so could offer us her tickets to that night’s gala screening, complete with red carpet and formal-wear dress code.
Like a Star Trek convention, the Cannes Film Festival is both impossible to describe and exactly what you would expect. This small French town on the coast had been temporarily overrun by selfie-takers like it was the Influencer World Championships. (Of course, much like my favorite bumper sticker—“You’re not in traffic; you ARE traffic”—we, in our bow tie and velvet dress, were part of the circus.)
On the red carpet we paused for the dozens of photographers, only to laugh very hard when we realized NONE of them were taking our photo and continue up the steps into the theater. Since we were using Margaret’s festival-nominee tickets, our seats were just ridiculous, fourth-row center and DIRECTLY in front of the film’s cast and director who entered to sustained applause.3 The movie was a biopic about French national hero Abbé Pierre; very well-made and well-acted, but schmaltzy and overlong. It hardly mattered—the movie could’ve been terrible and the red-carpet walk would have made it worth our time.
We paraded out of the theater. In any sane universe, that bizarre experience would be the high point of our entire year. As it turned out, it wasn’t even the high point of our night.
At a beachside bar we rendezvoused with Margaret, Stephen, and a few others to debrief our respective evenings. Within moments, we realized we had the less interesting story; Margaret’s involved Kate Fucking Winslet, who cornered her after the ceremony and gushed about how great “Poof” was. This is really Margaret’s story to tell (or not), but suffice it to say, we were dizzy with excitement for her. Just like the Cannes selection in the first place, I felt prouder and happier than if it had been my movie getting all the praise. (I don’t even have a movie! And I’m the one with the film degree!)
The awards ceremony was the following evening. Kiki and I watched the YouTube broadcast and spotted Margaret among her fellow short-film nominees on the red carpet (slotted in the procession between Wim Wenders and Orlando Bloom), then met Stephen and some other “Poof” cast and crew in a hotel bar to watch the rest.
Compared to the Oscars, the Cannes awards are mercifully short. Alas, “Poof” didn’t win the short-film award. We could hardly be more biased, of course, but everything so far had been such a fairy tale that I felt genuine surprise that it didn’t. I mean, why WOULDN’T it, ya know?
To add to the improbabilities of the whole weekend, Sunday was Margaret’s birthday. We went with two of Margaret’s friends for a nice dinner down on the water4 and then walked back into town, sunlight fading over the hills as tourists lingered on the beach and workers under spotlights began to disassemble the film-festival infrastructure.
In all of the insanity we somehow still hadn’t actually seen “Poof,” and so our final stop on the trip was their Airbnb, where Margaret opened her laptop and showed it to us.
It’s hard to write a review of a ten-minute short film in which I’m so emotionally invested. The various luminaries had it right, though: “Poof” is a charming and thoughtful short story with brilliant comic timing, quirky characters (Catherine Curtin channeling Jennifer Coolidge; Andrea Rosen channeling Shelley Duvall), and verbal and visual jokes that gave me several belly laughs. I’m excited to see it again, and if/when it becomes broadly available, we’ll of course share it widely and loudly.
As Kiki and I walked back to our Airbnb for a few hours’ sleep before flying back to Amsterdam, I suddenly chuckled. “Of course it doesn’t take anything away from how great that was,” I told Kiki. “But I can’t believe all this”—I mentally waved my hand at everything from Abbé Pierre to Kate Winslet—”came from that little movie.”
Of course, that was a lie. I could believe it. Movies are powerful things.