Cannes is a short trip from Bono's seaside villa in Eze-sur-Mer. He bought it with The Edge in 1993, and considers himself grateful to a coastline that, he says, gave him a "delayed adolescence."
"I can tell you I've slept on beaches close to here," Bono says with a grin. "I've woken up in the sun."
But that doesn't mean the Cannes Film Festival is a particularly familiar experience for the U2 frontman. He's here to premiere the Apple TV documentary "Bono: Stories of Surrender," which captures his one-man stage show. Before coming, Bono's daughter, the actor Eve Hewson, gave him some advice.
"She said: 'Just get over yourself and bring it,'" Bono said in an interview on a hotel off the Croisette. "What do I have to bring? Bring yourself and your gratitude that you're a musician and they're allowing you into a festival that celebrates actors and storytellers of a different kind. I said, 'OK, I'll try to bring it.'"
Besides, Cannes, he notes, was founded amid World War II as an alternative to then-Mussolini controlled Venice Film Festival. It was, he says, "designed to find fascists."