Much of the early commentary has focused on what’s missing: the old Hollywood presence, the tanks on the Croisette, the large-scale premieres that turned Cannes into a global marketing stage. That version of the festival has clearly receded. But it’s too easy to read that as absence. Hollywood hasn’t disappeared—it’s been redistributed. The stars are still here, just not in the same configuration. Instead of arriving with studio machinery behind them, they’re embedded in international productions, working with directors outside the traditional system. The logic has shifted from spectacle to something more fluid, and less immediately legible.