/> In his four years on the Cote d'Azur, industry expert Tanuj Garg gives us an exclusive account of why the recently concluded Cannes Film Market chose wine over champagne.

Cannes 2009 could not have been more predictable - the prevailing economic gloom has obviously had a ferocious impact on the key film markets that have taken place in the year gone by, and no one was expecting the Marche du Cannes to be a gold mine. Being the biggest in the world gave it a serious disadvantage - it was the most severely hit, notwithstanding the swine flu scare.

For the thousand-odd critics, celebrity hounds, the enormous paparazzi and the locals, the festival offered a brilliant concentration of star quality.

The competition line up was the most astounding in all the years that I have been visiting the sea-side town - 20 films from directors, who, between them, have competed for the Palme d'Or on 48 previous occasions. But for the majority of producers and distributors focused on doing serious business at the Marche, the massive oomph quotient means little.

Being a Cannes regular who is used to the manic hustle-bustle during the festival, I had sniffed, just a day before the opening that that wasn't going to be the case this year.

The Croisette, the beach-front street that serves as the main artery of the festival was sparsely populated, hotel and yacht bookings were down, stand decors were sober and strictly business, and the number of terrace and beach-side party invites in my bag weren't half as many as those in recent years.

The sobering statistic provided in the daily local media was a 20%-25% dip in buyer attendance. Ironically, there was a drop in the number of exhibiting sellers as well, which was evident in the vast untaken floor space in the basement of The Palais (where much of the business gets transacted.)

The barren sponsorship panels above the red carpet on both sides of The Palais, and the numerous naked pillars and advertising spots on and around The Croisette once adorned by extensive corporate and product branding, indicated that no one had spare cash to show off.

The small buyers I met were far and few. They were interested but cautious about making significant procurements given their lower acquisition budgets. I met many who arrived in the second week when hotel rates come down marginally. The big buyers were interested primarily in tent pole titles at shoe-string prices.

Small-budget movies that are incredibly distinct in their genre had relatively easier takers making the generalist movies the worst affected in a market that is clearly over-stocked. There was news that Russian buyers were going to boycott European and American sellers given the latter's refusal to re-negotiate erstwhile deal terms.

Life wasn't cosy for the sales agents who had to work harder for their money as well - the established ones were successful in shifting select product to their loyal network of mainstream buyers while the lesser ones struggled.

From my conversations with head honchos of a number of sales houses, I gathered that an increasing number were looking to move from traditional art-house sales to raising external finance for co -producing films, consequently giving them greater control on the content and therefore on its global exploitation.

It had to be the slowest market that the global film industry has seen - the sunshine in Cannes was glorious through the fortnight, but the clouds in the marketplace will take some time to get by.