Cannes Film Festival explained: How juries, standing ovations, and the Palm Dog work

The Cannes Film Festival is hallowed ground in cinema but understanding its unique landscape can be confounding.

The Côte d’Azur festival, which kicked off Tuesday, is a 10-day ballet of spectacle and film where even the photographers wear tuxedos, standing ovations are timed with stopwatches and movies tend to be referred to by the names of their directors — "the Almodóvar," "the Malick," "the Coppola."

From the outside, it can seem mad. From the inside, it can be hardly less disorienting.