I feel like we're missing the point here talking about convenience and how long the process takes for film vs digital. That's like asking why people cook food themselves when they can buy at a restaurant or why buy all the ingredients to cook something when you can get premade meals to just microwave in the oven. Why hunt with a bow and arrow when you can use a gun? There are different skills involved and different results even though you're working towards the same means.
I think the easiest thing for us to initially identify when looking at a photo (especially us techies) is sharpness in photos. So it's easy to just say digital is the sharpest and leave it at that, but what happens when you start looking further at color, tonality, or mood? Film inherently has character in all those things, but flat raw files need to be manipulated to achieve those things. It takes a really really long time to learn how to properly process raw files whereas film right off the bat offers this to you. So in that sense, film is faster and easier than digital
I've always tried to not let the tools I use get in the way of the images I produce. When the viewer looks at my images and only asks what camera or what lens I feel as if I've failed a bit. Similarly, if the perspective of an wide angle lens or some kind of "cheap photo trick" is the only thing that makes the image even a little bit interesting then I've also failed a bit.
When I did this full time I often had to rely on every "cheap photo trick" I had in my bag to produce images for daily publication. That's what happens when you have to cover stuff like bake sales and ice cream socials for a living. Sure, you get some juicy assignments, too, but you can't be selective when you have 15 minutes in your schedule and the features editor is waiting for 2-3 photos from that ice cream social for their front page.
We are photo enthusiasts so it's natural we ask about lenses and cameras, but when I work I'll use whatever tools suit my needs. As a result, I haven't shot film or even much in RAW in a long time. A 17-50/2.8 sits on my main camera pretty much full-time, even though I know going back to a prime lens would improve results in many ways. I use a flash to manipulate light even though finding beautiful natural light is one of the biggest highs a photographer can get.
Shooting film was satisfying, kind of the same way using an old manual camera was, because not everyone could do it. It almost feels like cheating when you peep the histogram on your image in camera so you can adjust it. Same for being able to save almost any photo in post processing. Back in the day if you fudged it up in the field that was it. You were done. When you got it right in the field it felt satisfying.
One day I was feeling really burned out at work. We often had more assignments and less time than we would have liked to shoot them in. I felt I was turning in crap work because of it and, as corny as it sounds, it started to hurt my soul.
I miraculously had some extra time at an assignment one day, so I decided to shoot with two manual film cameras, two simple primes, no motordrives, no flash and just one roll of film in each camera. I slowed down, took my time and tried to remember what I liked about photography. Something about one tiny click and manually cranking the film forward one frame at a time is a thrill you don't get at 6fps on a DSLR.
I don't even remember what the event was, but I remember this little kid with a dirty face and the biggest smile and eyes every. I shot several frames of him doing something and the available lighting was pretty good. I learned to occasionally make time for enjoying the process of creating images so I wouldn't go crazy. It didn't entirely work, but that's another story.
Whatever tool works best for your type of photography is the right tool, but sometimes slowing down with "lesser" equipment and enjoying the process more can save your Zen.
EDIT: If you read this far, thanks for putting up with my ramblings.