In this conversation at the 79th Festival de Cannes, Anupama Chopra sits down with actor Aditi Rao Hydari, now on her fourth Cannes — though she would never call herself a seasoned regular. Aditi reflects on how the chaos of the festival has shifted for her over the years, why she still arrives determined to hold on to the five-year-old's wonder she came with the very first time, and why being authentic to herself — bare skin, loose hair, no makeup on a quiet morning if she feels like it — matters more than the relentless red-carpet comparison machine. She and Anupama discuss the Lights on Women's Worth program in its sixth year, why the conversation around gender in cinema is still necessary but should one day become effortless, and Aditi pushes back thoughtfully on the way Indian cinema is increasingly being flattened into reductive categories — South versus Hindi, mainstream versus regional — when our greatest strength has always been the sheer plurality of stories the country contains. Aditi also opens up about why Cannes feels like the Hunger Games of glamour, how she practises wiring her brain to refuse the pressure of the algorithm and the comparison economy, and why the only success she measures herself by here is whether she has moved through the day with grace, kindness, and authenticity intact. She talks about putting her phone away entirely during the festival, about the team that protects her ability to stay that five-year-old in front of the camera, and about leaning on her stylist Sanam Ratansi when instinct is the only thing left to trust. She closes with what's next — wrapping Imtiaz Ali's Netflix romantic drama O Saathi Re alongside Avinash Tiwary and Arjun Rampal, the joyful indulgence of Konkona Sen Sharma and Jaydeep Sarkar's Prime Video show Welcome to Khoya Mahal with Barun Sobti and Aparna Sen, her long-awaited collaboration with Vishal Bhardwaj on Lust Stories 3 opposite husband Siddharth, and a slate of Tamil and Telugu projects she's not quite ready to name.