Mr Yash Chopra once said, a story never fails, its budget does. My inaugural Cannes experience dates to 2012, marked by the screening of Peddlers in the Critics’ Week and Gangs Of Wasseypur in the Directors’ Fortnight. No one told me what to do or who to speak to. Sometimes it helps to embrace what you don’t know and just ask freely. Now, I’m thrilled to be able to offer that guidance and support to others.

I feel one must attend Cannes as a student and a lover of world cinema. My advice is to register early, book your tickets and accommodation early, and try staying as close as possible to the Le Palais at the Croisette (Boulevard de la Croisette) since this is where all the screenings take place. There are many Airbnb options now but stay close because you have to walk a lot. Sneakers over heels in Cannes, always. Oh, the weather can be very unpredictable, so carry an umbrella!

The filmmaking community is very small around the world, and film festivals become the capital for us to converge every year. Meetings for me at Cannes started at 7 am for early breakfast and went on till 4 am. Last year, I locked a sales agent in my upcoming film Kill, at 2.30 am at the Grand Hotel Terrace garden. That very agent worked with us closely and went on to secure Kill’s landmark distribution deal with Lionsgate at the Toronto International Film Festival. I strongly recommend always having your 30-second pitch ready at all times.

Cannes opened my eyes about co-productions and how Europe and India can work together. I learned about the (co-production) treaty signed with France in 1985 and we became the first ones to apply for it in 2011-2012 for The Lunchbox. Meeting European producers, having meaningful conversations led me from strength to strength in articulating how to structure a coproduction, and learning new means to make our dreams happen.

There’s a huge multi-floor market at the Palais. Just to go there and experience the sheer volume of the business of cinema. You’ll find people from Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Canada, Europe, America, New Zealand, and of course India. Witness films being sold, remake rights being bought, and imagine having conversations of so many log lines, so many stories and dreams!

India has one of the largest tents at the coast which is the meeting point of all National Commissions of any country and any work and conversations. If you want to reach out to a talent in a particular country, the office there enables you to do that. Studios station themselves at the Croisette where the five-star hotels are buzzing with the top studio heads. These studios and talent agencies put up their banners here – it’s quite a beautiful sight!

The world discovered Tarantino at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Gangs Of Wasseypur (2012) also premiered there. If you walk a little further, there’s the Miramar Hotel – where the Critics’ Week happens and where Peddlers (2012) and The Lunchbox (2013) played and got sold to the world.

In Cannes, I don’t think any connection is meaningless, what happens is you end up meeting one person who connects you to another person from a certain country and actually at the end of it, if you do end up at the Oscars, to run a campaign, all this adds up. Every connection can open up to a bunch of voters around the world who can be champions for films Cannes is a global village – a tiny community of filmmakers from all over the world and how to join those dots, is actually what happens at Cannes.

Cannes is a great starting point to witness the love for cinema at that scale.