This week the 65th Cannes Film Festival kicked off, and amongst the red carpet, A-listers and yachts our Head of Programme Mark Cosgrove will be in the thick it, searching for films, partnerships and creative ideas to bring back to Bristol, and to Watershed.

Cannes, the highlight of the film world's calendar, is the longest continually running film festival ever. We all immediately think of Cannes' glitz and glam, and of course that exists in spades, but it's easy to forget that Cannes is most importantly a meeting place, and a major showcase of new, exciting filmmaking.

Before he jetted off to the French Riviera, Mark sat down to talk about what makes Cannes special and what he's most looking forward to at the festival:

At last year's festival Mark discovered a little film called The Artist, which went on to become our most successful film of all time. Terrence Malick scooped the top prize, the Palme d'Or, for The Tree of Life, and Lars Von Trier made a bit of a faux pas with his quip about Hitler.

Keep up to date with the latest from the Croisette by following Mark on Twitter @msc45, using #shedcff, or checking the DShed page for a quick summary.

It's always eventful, and this year Mark has a bumper programme to choose from. The competition line up includes Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard's first film since A Prophet, Michael Haneke's Love, which reunites him with The Piano Teacher's Isabelle Huppert, plus new films from David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis), Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) Walter Salles (On The Road) and Ulrich Seidl (Paradise: Love).

The only Briton on the list is Ken Loach, whose whisky comedy The Angels' Share promises to be a much more light-hearted offer than his 2006 Palme d'Or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley.

The good news is that you don't have to be in the French Riviera or wait for months to catch Ken's latest: we've already secured it for our screens from Fri 1 June. The same goes for Cosmopolis and Moonrise Kingdom, which we'll be screening from Fri 15 and Fri 8 June respectively.

We've been reporting from Cannes for many years, since before 140-character updates were invented! Check out our Festival Diaries section on DShed for reports Watershed staff have created as they've attended festivals - Berlin, Toronto, Tampere, Singapore, South by Southwest, Ars Electronica and more.