Cannes is a beautiful and boring sport. I will not give up on anything | Agnès Poirier

Nsomething that prepares you for the shock that is the Cannes film festival: adrenaline, fatigue, joy and emotion, as well as hunger, anger, magic and cynicism. For young cinephiles, and almost anyone who works in the film industry, it is the mecca of cinema and has been for nearly eighty years. Anyone who is going for the first time this week, as I did 25 years ago, should not listen to the old ones crying – Cannes veterans – who will complain that the festival has turned into a dirty show and swear that this year will be the last. They and game, and you can bet they’ll be back for as long as their knees can take it. For there is no such thing.

Born to counter Benito Mussolini’s Venice film festival, its first edition was scheduled for September 1939, but Adolf Hitler had other plans. Last year, under pressure from Berlin and Rome, the main prize of the Venice film festival, the Coppa Mussolini, was awarded to Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film Olympia., causing the French, British and American delegations to leave. Cannes, therefore, was created as a “free world” festival. More than 80 years later, for all its sins, it has remained true to that original promise.

Over the decades, Cannes has turned into a very complex giant, demanding more and more space, because it attracts a large number of journalists and experts. The purpose-built Palais des Festivals was to be established in the 1980s. The “Bunker”, as we call it, isn’t exactly pretty but it does a brutal job of managing the incredible crowds of Cannes. This yearnearly 40,000 festival-goers descend on the French Riviera from 140 different countries, with a wide selection of films from all over the world. At the same time, the Marché du Film, which has been running alongside the festival since the late 1960s, gathers around 16,000 people, with dozens of films and works on sale. Cannes is a major meeting of the leading figures in cinema and a major film market. When I first arrived as a young protester in my 20s, it already felt like a small, hot world.

For 11 days in the month of May, three different worlds live the same life – opposition, industrialists and red kings – colliding almost by accident on the coastal road called La Croisette. Hundreds of monks watch several movies a day with a monastic tradition. When they partake in parties, they regret it the next morning. You can see some of us sleeping in all the pictures; how some of his friends watch movies is a mystery. I remember a famous French cynic who had dreams so vivid in the dark that he was sure they were scenes from the movies. His comments were full of insightful analysis of non-existent moments.

Critics we rush between screenings, press conferences, interviews, our desks and the bunker’s free espresso machines, often forgetting to eat or urinate. On the floor, in the basement, and in hotels and rental houses, the film market moves day and night: buyers roll numbers, the charm of producers, directors and writers fight for their vision. Above them float Cannes’ top – stars and “talent” spending hours on hair and makeup before climbing the 24 steps of the red carpet in rented couture and jewelry. When people in the industry moan, “Oh God, it’s Cannes again”, it’s a collision of financial worries, slow glamor and expected fatigue.

These worlds sometimes collide in the most poetic or vulgar ways. One morning, rushing to my first screening at 7.30am, I was walking along the Croisette when I saw, coming towards me, a little disheveled in a tuxedo, Jack Nicholson returning to his hotel after a long night. I smiled, he smiled too. He was alone, he had no guardians, he had no guardians. Those were the days. I even shared a ride with Takeshi Kitano in full samurai garb, and I’ll never forget turning into a hotel balcony and getting nose to nose with Max von Sydow – Ingmar Bergman’s old star from The Seventh Seal.. My cinephile heart skipped a beat.

One of my favorite parts of Cannes, aside from the competition where you see the best films of the year, is Cannes Classics, a showcase of international art and cinematography. I always start the festival there: it’s a good way to reset and start again. Then I’m ready for a 10-day attack of motion pictures, and the magical moment that leads every review of Cannes – the sound of the ceremony, the palms rising on the red carpet from the water and then the sky, lifted by the ethereal arpeggios of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals.

In 1955, Cannes awarded its first Palme d’Or to Delbert Mann’s Marty; 50 years later, I found myself in the company of his wonderful star, Betsy Blair, on the Croisette. I was delighted to see Ken Loach double up those stairs to pick up the Palme, escorted by the police out of Nice airport as if he were a head of state. I saw Iranian directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof showing films that are at stake in their lives. For all the craziness of the red carpet and samurai costumes, Cannes does not forget that it was founded as a symbol of resistance. That, as much as beauty and fatigue, is why we go back.

• Agnès Poirier is a British, American and European political commentator, writer and critic