May 2009 in the beautiful city of Cannes: Four students and their teacher are arriving, after a one-stop flight over Zurich, at their hotel. It's hot. Really hot. What are they doing there?

 It's the 62nd International Film Festival, which is taking place, and which we attend! It was a joint-project of the "Office Franco-Allemand pour la Jeunesse" and the "Semaine de la Critique" - a sub-section of the festival, which brought us, one of eitht groups, consisting of four high school students from France and Germany, there.

 When we submitted the application earlier this year in our Easter break, we had never expected to be selected: everything was so far away. A week later, we gained certainty. We - Claudia, Jenny, Frauke, me and our teacher, Mr. Wilts - had been accepted.

 And so we were watching for one week every morning a short movie, followed by the daily feature movie of the "Semaine de la Critique". Don't expect those to be "easy" movies. They're, compared to the typical movies you can see in the cinemas here, quite different. But that's also what makes them interesting.

 So, after some discussion with the film team, as well as other groups from the project, we had one and a half hour to write a film critic. One and a half hour sounds like much time? Believe me, it isn't. The first day, we were really shocked, how fast the time went by. But we got used to it. In the end, the best critic was selected by another German group and then published on the internet. If you're interested, you can find those on www.kinema.fr.

 Later - it was one of the last days - there was a three-hour discussion taking place, in which Frauke represented our group, as we needed to select a film for the "Prix de la (toute) jeune Critique". It became "Whisper with the Wind" - our favorite candidate.

 Of course, we also had some free time, even though the film week kept us really busy with all its schedules and meetings. But we still enjoyed the beach, the shopping in the city, as well as some additional films, which weren't part of the "Semaine de la Critique". Anyway, we saw sometimes really remarkable movies, such as Francis Ford Coppola's new one, called "Tetro".

 When looking back, there are all these situations, that made the time there great: it was just an unforgettable experience. We met people and found new friends. And as one of our critics, the one from Claudia and Jenny on "Ordinary People", was selected as the best German critic, we're going to meet some of them again at the Berlinale 2010. And that's what makes me smile.