Up on the rooftop of the Hôtel Martinez on the Cannes Croisette, Mike Faist is fighting back tears. He lost his father in December and his grandfather just three weeks later, and on Thursday, found himself deeply moved at the world premiere of Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed epic. This was Faist’s first day ever at the festival. “It could be [Coppola’s] last and my first—I don’t take it lightly, and I do not take my days for granted any more,” Faist tells me. “I’ve been having a little bit of a crisis for myself in the past couple of weeks, as Challengers has come out and I’ve been saying to people that, in the next, what, 5 or 10 years, we will probably be losing some of our greatest giants. And it really hurts. It’s very sad for me.” He gets choked up and pauses to collect himself: “I get emotional thinking about it.”

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The evening before, there was Faist in a tux, a reel of his greatest screen work so far—from the aforementioned Challengers to his striking work in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story—playing to thunderous applause before he accepted the night’s final Chopard Trophée, an official Cannes Film Festival 2024 honor bestowed to rising stars. It’s been a whirlwind of a weekend for the actor who’s just skyrocketed to a new profile with his red-hot tennis drama, costarring Zendaya and Josh O’Connor. He sees that movie’s theatrical success and Cannes’s promise of cinematic artistry as of precisely the spirit he’d like to carry forward in this industry: “It’s an inhumane thing to just sit in your apartment alone by yourself and just mindlessly click on whatever’s next on the streaming thing,” he says. “We have to bring people together in those shared spaces.”

Demi Moore shared a similar sentiment just moments earlier—notable, since she’s coming into Cannes not as a Chopard Trophée honoree, but as its esteemed godmother, a prestigious designation reserved for screen icons. Oh, and also as the host of the amfAR gala, a benefit for HIV/AIDS research she previously hosted 27 years ago (the last time she was in Cannes). Oh, and as the star of The Substance—a body-horror feast from director Coralie Fargeat that’s one of the buzziest remaining competition titles. “It feels like the completing of a circle,” she says. (I also spoke with Moore for a career-spanning conversation on Sunday at the American Pavilion nearby.)

The Chopard dinner is one of the glitziest, starriest events of a very glitzy, starry festival. In attendance at the Carlton Beach Club (yes, we walked on the sand in our tuxes and gowns) alongside Moore, Faist, and fellow honoree Sophie Wilde were Moore’s fellow Hollywood A-lister Kevin Costner, competition jury members including Greta Gerwig and Omar Sy, and arthouse favorites like Vicky Krieps. The event began with remarks by the festival’s general delegate Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch, before Moore took the stage for some remarks on Faist and Wilde’s behalf.

“This place represents not just the top of cinematic art, but a place where dreams come through frames and stories, and the location isn’t too shabby either,” Moore said. “I argue you need nothing from me and have all the resources within yourselves to handle whatever comes your way. But as your appointed godmother, remember, I’m not just here for the fun stuff, and you don’t have to do it alone.”

Wilde, who broke out in last year’s horror phenomenon Talk to Me, took the stage after Chopard’s president Caroline Scheufele and seemed to bask in Moore’s glow, giddy at the mere proximity with her. “This is just so sick,” she said with a grin. “There’s something so sort of surreal yet incredibly special about being recognized by a group of people who you really admire and whose work has been a constant source of inspiration.”

Moore wasn’t much older than Wilde and Faist when she first came to Cannes in 1997. Back then, Elizabeth Taylor was supposed to host the amfAR event but had to bow out due to surgery. Moore, who was attending the festival that year in support of then husband Bruce Willis’s The Fifth Element, reenacts what the late legend said to her as if still in awe of even getting that phone call. “With that sweet, breathy voice: ‘It’s Elizabeth Taylor…,’” Moore recalls. “We had never met, so of course, I had to say yes. You don’t say no!”

Of course, Moore wasn’t in town for her own film then. Now she is, for the first time ever—and for a project she’s deeply proud of. “It had elements that were risky and I’d never really seen—it’s really about the male perspective of the idealized woman that we as women have bought into,” she says, before teasing that The Substance will be “a little bloody, a little gory,” and very thrilling. “I feel that butterfly nerves of seeing it in such a grand way. For it to be premiering here, I feel fairly humbled. I do.” Spoken like a true godmother.