IN a sunny corner overlooking the yacht-filled harbour, a handful of Cannes’ youngest visitors are bouncing around a vibrant-coloured carpet in the first-ever crèche at the world’s biggest film festival. The brainchild of three film industry mothers struggling to juggle being a parent with the gruelling annual run of festivals, Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon), is a light, airy room “where children are the new VIPs”. Kids had previously been a very rare sight at the annual celebrity-filled festival, which thrives on glitz and glamour but has done little to meet the practical needs of movers and shakers with babies or toddlers in tow. But for the first time this year, the festival has opened the special day care centre to lend a hand to parents in the film industry. It follows a similar nursery, “playhouse and nap room” set up at the Sundance film festival last year by the US-based Moms-in-Film group, which had railed at the lack of child-friendly facilities at Cannes.

Three film industry professionals with young children came up with the idea a few months ago while sharing tips about how to handle the work-life balance. Together they founded “Parenting at Film Festivals”. “We were just comparing notes on how hard it was to be a parent at a festival,” said Michelle Carey, an Australian film programmer and one of the three women who founded the group. During last year’s festival, she had to dash back to her hotel room some 20 minutes away just to feed her infant son, which was both difficult and impractical. And she wasn’t alone. Coming

up with a plan, the three approached the festival organisers and Cannes’ sprawling film market and by April, the initiative was in place.

The infrastructure was funded by the film market while the child care costs were raised through a crowdfunding initiative with contributions from more than 12 companies and institutions. Supported by the 5050/2020 collective, which is pushing for an equal place for women in the film industry, the move comes a year after Cannes signed up to a gender equality pledge. But Carey said the initiative to offer parent-friendly services was entirely led by her and her fellow mothers. “We went to them and offered a solution,” she said. “If we hadn’t gone to them, they wouldn’t have been able to do it themselves.”

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2019