Starting early next week, film royalty like Pedro Almodovar, Sofia Coppola, and Kirsten Dunst – as well as producers, distributors, C-list celebrities, and other hangers-on – will descend on the seaside city of Cannes for the 59th Cannes Film Festival. What will they do, besides soaking up the Mediterranean sun and the admiring attention of the worldwide press and star-struck fans who stake out the red carpet?

Cannes is not only about the films. There are the parties, with their celebrity sponsors and absurd excesses: Kimora Lee Simmons is hosting a party with Palisades Pictures on May 24, in Cap d’Antibes. The AIDS charity amfAR, chaired by Elizabeth Taylor and supported by the likes of Sharon Stone and Elton John, is having a huge dinner and auction the next day. The decor will be “art-directed” by Carine Roitfeld, the editor-in-chief of French Vogue. Among the items being auctioned off, Fendi has contributed a cashmere and fur poncho.(PETA supporters will – it is hoped – have chosen another party for the evening.) On May 26 is the Gucci party at the Hotel Martinez. And on and on.

The three most prestigious hotels – the Martinez, the Carlton International, and the Majestic Barriere – all on La Croisette, the main drag along the sea – are full for the two weeks of the festival. “Hello, you’re always welcome at the Martinez,” a man croons on the Martinez’s hold phone recording. Well, maybe you’re welcome in June.

During the festival, the population of Cannes, normally around 68,000, doubles. City officials, accustomed by now to this circus, have made preparations. They have hired 15 extra people to handle the garbage (7,000 extra tons over the 11 days). They have asked the French government to send extra police (also to compensate for the strike by local police that was recently announced for next Friday). They have planted thousands of flowers. Traffic will be redirected.

The current mayor of Cannes, Bernard Brochard, has tried to extend the benefits of the festival to the city’s residents as well. Fifteen hundred tickets to festival events are distributed by lottery, and the Mayor has instituted a separate film series, Cinema de la Plage, on the beach, where people who line up at City Hall for tickets can enjoy open-air films from their chaises longues.

The festival is a slightly mixed experience for the locals. A woman who grew up in Cannes and now works at the Palais des Festivals said that the “Cannois” love being the center of the world for 11 days a year, and everyone wants things to go well – for the weather to be perfect, everyone to have a good time.

The official festival lineup is unusually diverse this year, with only one director in competition who is a previous winner of the top prize, the Palme d’Or. The festival will open next Wednesday with the world premiere of “The Da Vinci Code” (which is not in competition). The 19 films in competition for the top prize will be shown over the next 11 days. They include Mr. Almodovar’s “Volver,” Ms. Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” which stars Ms. Dunst as the blithe queen, and Richard Linklater’s “Fast Food Nation,” based on the muckraking book about the fast food industry by Eric Schlosser. In a year when the festival’s jury has its first Chinese president, the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, there is only one Asian film in competition, the Chinese director Lou Ye’s “Summer Palace.”

Besides being a big party, Cannes is a major marketplace, where American production companies try to sell their films to foreign distributors. “It fits into the top three – Cannes, Sundance, Toronto. But on global business, it’s the number one,” said Bob Berney, the president of Picturehouse, who will be in Cannes next week promoting a film his company is distributing, the Spanish director Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which is in the official competition.

Beyond the official festival, which includes approximately 50 films, there is what is called the Marche de Cinema, in which hundreds of films are shown in private screenings to distributors and industry insiders. Most of this takes place in the streets around the Palais des Festivals. “It’s all in this center area of four or five blocks of the town – a huge circus with signs everywhere,” said Mr. Berney. “There’s everything from low-end exploitation films to the prestigious, tuxedo festival.”

Darlene Caamano, the president of Nala Films, a production company that focuses on films with Latin talent, explained: “You have all the major foreign distributors together in one place, and a lot of them go into the festival with the major part of their budget unused.” Nala will be trying to sell two films currently in post production: “After Sex,” starring Zoe Saldana, and “The Air I Breathe,” starring Andy Garcia, Forest Whitaker, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

But as it has grown – both as an event and as a marketplace – the festival has lost some of its old glamour. Asked where the stars hang out, the woman who works at the Palais des Festivals said it was hard to say. “So many people come just to see them. They camp out outside the Palais from eight in the morning until seven in the evening, when the walk up the red carpet happens.”

Some stars still let themselves be seen, she said. Quentin Tarantino, the president of the 2004 jury, would walk alone on La Croisette. Sigourney Weaver would browse in the boutiques. But most stick to their parties. It may be the global meeting place for film people, but the industry is still a small world, and likes its own kind.

“Twenty years ago, you could see them eating on the beach, on the cafe terraces. You could bump into them on the street. You could see them playing petonques [similar to bocce] on the squares,” the local woman said. “Until the 1980’s or the 1990’s, the festival was very glamorous, but at the same time very convivial. Now, I wouldn’t say the stars hide themselves, but they are more discreet.”