The Cannes red carpet has a rhythm most people never see - the hours of standing, the shouted names, the split-second window to catch a star's glance before the next handler moves them along. A new documentary, A Photographer in Cannes, turns its lens on one of the people usually behind it: Erlend Štaub, an Estonian photographer who has worked the festival for fifteen consecutive years. Directed by Kullar Viimne, the 67-minute film opens on November 10, 2026.
Štaub's routine is a split shift of glamour and grind. Days are spent at parties and premieres, working the crowd and making the pictures; nights are spent processing and delivering them in time for the next morning. The documentary presents that cycle as both a craft and a physical endurance test - a job, per the film's framing, that demands social instinct as much as technical skill.
The Estonian is no stranger to festival floors beyond the Croisette. He has served for several years as the official photographer for the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and his reputation abroad keeps him in demand. A Photographer in Cannes follows him through that international circuit, where knowing how to read a room is as important as knowing how to light a face.
The Line Between Access and Intrusion
At the center of the film is a question Štaub treats as professional craft: where is the line when people start feeling great? It is a compact way of describing the invisible boundary a red-carpet photographer negotiates with every subject - the point at which attention becomes pressure and a picture stops being wanted. The documentary builds its portrait around that instinct, suggesting that his success rests less on gear than on reading when to push forward and when to step back.
A Fist Bump From Vin Diesel
The film also collects the small, strange encounters that come with a life spent at premieres. Among them: a fist bump from Vin Diesel, which Štaub recalls as a genuine highlight of the job. It is the kind of detail that gives the documentary its texture - a reminder that the red carpet, for all its choreography, still produces moments of unscripted contact between the famous and the people who photograph them.
A Photographer in Cannes is produced as a documentary in Estonian, with Štaub appearing as himself. Viimne directs; the film runs 67 minutes and arrives in release on November 10. Its TMDb rating currently sits at 0/10, reflecting a title that has yet to accumulate audience votes rather than any verdict on its quality.
For Hollywood audiences accustomed to seeing Cannes through the filter of studio publicity, the documentary offers the view from the other side of the velvet rope - a working life measured in delivered files, tired mornings and the occasional nod from a movie star. Štaub has spent fifteen years finding that balance. The film argues he has found something worth photographing in the process.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
