In this conversation at the 79th Festival de Cannes, Anupama Chopra sits down with actor Diana Penty and couturier Amit Aggarwal, who are both at the festival representing the BMW Excellence Club. For Diana, this is her third Cannes — and she reflects on how each visit has opened her up more fully to the festival's sprawling, electric ecosystem of cinema, fashion, food and culture. For Amit, this is a first, and he is struck by how Cannes manages to hold quiet European elegance and pounding red-carpet energy in the same breath. The two talk about Thierry Frémaux's idea that cinema is a religion and that all the churches come together at Cannes, and about how fashion and film — long entwined, especially in India — are now formally marrying on the world's biggest stages. Diana opens up about the part of her career she has had to reconcile herself to: that the spotlight at events like this is on how she looks, and that she has accepted being introduced as "the beautiful Diana Penty" while quietly knowing there is so much more to her than that. Amit talks about cinema as the foundation of his work — citing Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and the timeless way Vidya Balan was once dressed in simple cotton sarees as eternal references for him — and about needing to watch a film every single night, often weeping himself to sleep, to feel ready for the next day. They speak honestly about the relentless pressure of red-carpet culture in the social media age — the four-hour window before the next look eclipses yours, the loss of organic moments to constant performance — and how both have learned to set boundaries, switch off, and centre themselves. They close by redefining excellence on their own terms: for Amit, it is doing your best with what you have at any given moment; for Diana, it is consistency, curiosity, and the quiet, invisible growth that happens between the milestones. #DianaPenty #AmitAggarwal #Cannes2026