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“We’re All Fighting to Tell Our Stories”: Daniel Tantalean’s Cannes Producer Diary #2
The view from Église Notre-Dame In the Summers producer Daniel Tantalean is a 2025 Gotham Cannes Producer Network Fellow and is blogging about his experience at the festival here at Filmmaker. Like his first post, this second entry takes the form of a letter written home to his fiance.
My Love,
I’m at the halfway point of this experience. And though I’ve started most mornings by sending you a quick text, just something sweet for you to wake up to, I still miss you terribly. Being here without you by my side feels like something is always slightly out of frame.
At this point, sleep is rare. There have already been late nights where the Fellows and I pour bottle after bottle of rosé, eat every delicious French thing in sight, swap stories, and argue about Sinners like only producers would do. We’ve grown close quickly, and I’m honestly so impressed by the people I get to share this experience with.
Still, I fall into old habits. I get a schedule and suddenly I’m a teacher’s pet again, dragging myself out of bed early to attend the Producers Network Breakfasts. I show up, bleary-eyed but eager, ready to meet new people and learn from the speakers seated across from us.
These breakfasts have become unexpectedly reflective. Whether we like it or not, there is a mild hesitation to represent the U.S., and the goodwill we once assumed we had is slipping. I listened as Indian filmmakers described how their government can block the distribution of co-productions that don’t pass CBFC certification. Or the Russian Indigenous filmmaker whose work has been banned from festivals, not because of the film itself, but because of where he’s from, despite not sharing the Russian government’s views. No premiere, no audience. Just silence.
Being in Cannes, surrounded by an international community, reminds me how insulated we can become back home. Collaboration across borders isn’t just about politics, it’s about people. We’re all fighting to tell our stories. Not just against financial odds, but rising censorship. And the idea that such suppression could take hold in the U.S. used to feel far-fetched. It doesn’t anymore. That makes me more cautious, more measured, and more aware of what it means to be a representative, not just of my country, but as a global citizen.
These moments stay with me. Maybe it’s just the nature of being at a foreign film festival, watching bold stories from around the world, it puts one in a state of constant questioning. I’ve taken in a few films so far: a surreal and devastating portrait of postpartum depression; a meditation on four generations of women processing inherited trauma; a love story interrupted by war. Then, in a jarring pivot, I walked into the Marché, surrounded by rows of booths selling genre titles for a quick buck.
It’s a whirlwind. A collision of art and commerce. And most of the time, I don’t even have the chance to process it, I’m off to another mixer, another filmmaker meeting, another panel.
But one day, I took my own advice. I hit pause.
I skipped a screening, wandered down side streets, passed local markets, and made my way up to Église Notre-Dame, the historic church perched on the hill above Cannes. I sat there, looking out over the town. It was cliché in the best way, a moment straight out of a French film. And in that quiet, I thought about the future of filmmaking. Of our place in it. Not just AI or job loss or outsourcing, though those are real concerns, but how those threats ultimately censor freedom of expression and the pursuit of who we are. To create scarcity to exert control, disrupt the community and remove our critical thinking.
If that future comes, will we be brave enough to confront it?
It’s hard not to fear what’s ahead. Because beyond the world of film, I think about our life together. A Latino man and a Jewish woman, both children of immigrants, building a future and (hopefully) a family. That very existence is political in ways we never asked for. Will we have to censor who we are? And if we have children, what does it mean to ask them to play small to stay safe? At the heart of this, perhaps it’s these very complexities of life that push me to be part of the films that I seek to make.
And yet, for all the contradictions, all the extravagance and dissonance, a film festival centering in one town for 11 days has the power to create a special energy and moments of constructive dialogue between communities.
We’re not here to fix the world. But this festival does offer glimpses, through stories told here, of something bigger than ourselves.
Maybe that’s the magic I’ve found in Cannes so far.
With Love From Cannes,
Daniel
