Day 6 - Seat Saving Protocol

This just in from one of our correspondents.

Before a press screening yesterday, a man described as a "pudgy, pale, and bitter-sounding German journalist" returned to a seat he had saved with his coat and bag from a previous screening. He found his things on the stairs, and the female journalist sitting in his seat said, "What, did you think we were in Majorca?"

According to eye-witnesses, his reaction was to have her banned from the entire festival. At the time of writing, it was not clear whether our pudgy protagonist was able to back up his threat.

I believe that by Berlinale protocol he was in the wrong. The accepted rule is that you can only save a seat by leaving your stuff on it in the same screening. This is defined as the time the door staff opens the auditorium. If you have left your stuff there from a previous screening, it automatically becomes trash and/or a security hazard. The German journalist was lucky his bag wasn't disposed of with a controlled explosion.

Does this kind of thing happen at Cannes?