Bono on his past, the new pope, and the threat of war

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.

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"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."

Shifts in geopolitical tectonics was much on Bono's mind. He has spent much of his activist life fighting for aid to Africa and combating HIV-AIDS. U.S. President Donald Trump's dismantling of USAID has reversed much of that.

"What's irrational is taking pleasure in the defacement of these institutions of mercy," Bono said.

"Bono: Stories of Surrender," an Andrew Dominik-directed black-and-white film that begins streaming May 30, adapts the one-man stage show that, in turn, came from Bono's 2022 book, "Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story."

In the film, Bono is self-effacing and reflective, sifting through the formative influence of his father, U2's skyrocketing to fame and considering how ego and social work might be related. He calls it "the tall tales of a short rock star." And as was the case on a recent sunny afternoon in Cannes, Bono makes a captivating raconteur.