Carl Robertson + Tristan Viney in Cannes: Day 1

After winning silver last year in the Cannes Young Lions competition, Carl Robertson and Tristan Viney are back, documenting their time in Cannes on their blog, 2 Lions 2 Furious.

This time last year we popped our Cannes Lions cherry.

We were fortunate enough to represent Australia and win a silver lion in the Young Lions Film competition. And right now we’re back in Cannes for this year’s festival – but not because we’ve earned it.

Some miscommunication during the award announcements resulted in us being incorrectly announced as winning gold – instead of silver. Yep, just like in Australia’s Next Top Model. Not that we watch it or anything. Because we’re heaps manly and love things like beer and monster trucks.

We detailed the experience for Campaign Brief last year, but the cliff notes go like this.

After being shortlisted in the Australian Young Lions Film competition, we made this.

We won the title of Australian Young Film Lions, and were flown to Cannes by NewsCorp to compete against 41 international teams of Young Lions from around the world. We had a brief, GoPro camera, 48 hours, and more Red Bull than we can count to in French to make this.

The Cannes Lions Film jury got together and judged the entries. After they’d done their thing, we were announced as winning gold. And we celebrated for 23 minutes, before being told it was a mistake and handing our prizes over to Bulgaria. (You can see their entry here. It’s actually really good.)

Then we celebrated and did this:

We’re still very, very stoked with our little win and, as is turns out, with the judging switcheroo. Because Cannes gave us a we’re-really-sorry-please-don’t-hate-us return festival pass.

So, now that we’re old news and back in Cannes, we’re going to be documenting our festival experience so young advertisers back home know what to expect when they get to the festival.

Follow all of our Cannes Lions 2015 musings and mayhem on our blog.