Julie Sisk’s Lifelong Passions for Film and Travel Fueled Take2Film

By David Bloom and Andrea R. Vaucher

Millions of people love to travel, devoting their free time and disposable income to visiting faraway destinations in search of compelling new experiences. And travel experiences are always more meaningful (and fun) when shared with like-minded souls, exploring a special place and time that brings together two loves at once. These special travel experiences are everywhere these days. Think yoga retreats from Peru to Positano, destination weddings, even book lovers who pay to read together under a faraway bridge.

Julie Sisk found a way to combine travel with her other life’s passion, movies, bringing cinephiles to some of the world’s most prominent and distinctive film festivals, in some of the world’s great cities, while providing insider access to the year’s most talked-about films, cultural conversations, and local adventures. Through Take2Film, her small groups of fellow film fans bring back from their voyages the experiences that liven dinner party conversations for the rest of the year.  

Take2Film is the wholly logical, if unplanned, result of decades of Sisk’s work with some of the world’s best-known film festivals, most notably her time as founder and long-time director of The American Pavilion at Cannes, the film festival of all film festivals held in the south of France every May.

Long before The American Pavilion launched, Vassar graduate Sisk worked with festivals in London, Denver, Mill Valley, FilmEx and the AFI Fest. Eventually, Sisk ended up working with Cannes, where her initial time there required far too much effort navigating the sprawling festival and attendant film market without cellphones, a place to rest and eat, or other conveniences. 

As Sisk and a journalist friend sought refuge in the British Pavilion in search of an available phone line (and a refuge from festival hubbub), Sisk was inspired to create an American equivalent at the festival. In 1989, backed by a hefty and well-timed sponsorship from Kodak, she did just that.

The American Pavilion would soon become an annual destination for film executives, directors, actors, cinematographers, buyers, distributors, media, and a contingent of college students participating in an extraordinary experience that included plenty of hard work, but also watching movies and connecting with some of the global film industry’s most influential people. The Pavilion’s presence anchored what since has become a veritable village at Cannes of international pavilions from many countries.

Years into Sisk’s work with the Pavilion, the student contingent had swelled to as many as 250, including Culinary Institute of America apprentices creating food for Pavilion attendees in the country that invented haute cuisine. Jealous parents and other adults soon wondered if they might take advantage of a similar program. So Sisk started doing that too.  

With nearly 40 years of Cannes experience, Sisk was uniquely positioned to offer culture-seeking travelers insider access. 

“I know Cannes as well as anybody,” Sisk says. “We started bringing a group of adults to the festival. I envisioned it as a bucket-list trip that people would do once: ‘This is your way in.’ I was really surprised that so many people would want to do it multiple times.” 

Part of that is because Sisk unearthed a quintessential recipe for success, especially in an era where our lives are overrun by online and virtual experiences. Yes, you can watch a movie in a local theater, or on your big-screen TV at home, if the film is one of the relatively few, especially from outside the United States, that make it there. 

But seeing that film in person at its world premiere is altogether different, especially as part of an extraordinary experience, in an extraordinary place. That is, indeed, worthy of a bucket list, or for the fortunate, an experience worthy of repeating, in multiple places, for years to come. 

Thus was born Take2Film. Sisk sold The American Pavilion to the parent company of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and left the organization in 2025. Creating a focused travel experience, without the daunting logistical demands of organizing and running the Pavilion, was a way for Sisk to return to the things she loved. 

This time, though, Sisk is doing it with more than just special-access trips to Cannes. Added to that list are trips to the festivals at Venice, on the Lido of Italy’s most beguiling city; San Sebastián, on Spain’s northern Basque coast; and BFI London, held throughout one of the world’s greatest cities. 

All three latter festivals fill the European calendar in early fall, and are major way stations (along with Cannes) for films with hopes of becoming awards contenders. These are places where the global conversation begins about the world’s best films and film performances in any year.   

All four festivals are also, of course, celebrations of film in its many forms, with both the latest blockbusters and daring auteur-driven dramatic features given their moments in the sun. Some will be seen across the world, while others never make it to U.S. screens. The festivals also celebrate many other kinds of cinematic expression, including documentaries, shorts, animation and more. 

Venice, for instance, is noted for its annual collection of technology-enabled creations that both advance the idea of what a “movie” is, while often being so bleeding edge they may not have a natural outlet anywhere else. 

If you want to visit the frontiers of filmmaking, this is your chance, perhaps alongside some of the more out-there creations featured in Venice’s every-other-year art Biennale. Also, as Sisk rightly notes, “In Venice, everywhere you look, there’s something amazing.” 

Truly, though, all four festivals provide attendees the possibility of many kinds of experiences, about film, food, art, and much else, Sisk says. 

“Any of these festivals, there’s the nut of the thing, which is the festival itself,” Sisk said. “But there’s a series of intimate, very special moments woven into this large extravaganza.” 

Take2Film focuses on giving participants access to all those great films, but also to these intimate and special moments. Even better, fellow attendees are cineastes too, and enjoy nothing more than a post-screening discussion, perhaps over food and drink, about what made a given film work, or not.  

These days, that might be the most valuable part of the entire experience. And it’s one many people would love to do again and again.

David Bloom is a long-time journalist with Forbes and co-founder of media startup Next TMT. He speaks and writes about the collision between tech and entertainment. Andrea R. Vaucher is an author and former Chief European Correspondent for Variety who regularly covered major European festivals, and also contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, and International Herald Tribune. They live in Santa Monica, Calif.