[custom_adv] The Cannes Film Festival could face a substantial 2021 delay, one year after the novel coronavirus pandemic forced organizers to scrap the prestigious event’s 73rd iteration, Variety reported. [custom_adv] The 2020 event had been slated to take place from May 12-23, but organizers announced April 14, 2020, that the mounting COVID-19 pandemic necessitated abandoning the festival in its “original form.” A more modest, three-day showcase was staged in its place, Vanity Fair reported. [custom_adv] This year, however, everything was different and less glamorous. With a 9 p.m. curfew, there was no typical festival mood to speak of. Whoever walked the red carpet had to pass through disinfection stations and had their temperature taken. [custom_adv] Wearing face masks and keeping a distance, selected guests watched on Tuesday the opening film, Emmanuel Courcol's Un Triomphe. Based on a true story, the tragicomedy is about an unemployed actor who gives theater workshops in prison, performs a play with the inmates and even goes on tour with them. [custom_adv] As the event closed on Thursday, a black carpet covered the traditional red one, and guests observed a minute of silence for the victims of the knife attack in neighboring Nice. [custom_adv] It is an irony of fate that the Cannes special edition was the last film event before the new lockdown, said festival director Fremaux. Beginning on Friday, the entire country goes into lockdown, just like in spring. People will only be allowed to leave their homes with an attestation outlining essential reasons, and all movie theaters in France will be closed. [custom_adv] Next year, the plan is for the festival to take place as usual with a full program in May. No one knows how realistic that is under the present circumstances. But festival director Fremaux is confident: "Cannes will be the first major international event after the pandemic." Just like it was the last before the second French lockdown. [custom_adv] It is hard to think of an event less suited to the age of the coronavirus than a film festival — thousands of strangers from all over the globe coming together to sit in packed screening rooms for a few hours and, if they’re lucky, mingle at an after-party where they’ll have a chance to share hors d’oeuvre with an Oscar winner. [custom_adv] Hope springs eternal that festivals will occur again at some point. As Parasite’s Best Picture–winning campaign proved, nothing creates buzz for a movie like a successful fest premiere, and for Oscar-watchers, the late-summer festivals separate the season’s wheat from the chaff, the Roma from the Life Itself. [custom_adv] There are supply-side incentives preventing this year’s slate from being canceled outright, too: Many festivals provide the revenue that funds their parent operations the rest of the year. Finally, many in the industry have clung to the return of festivals as a symbolic step on the road to normal, a sign that movies are finally back. [custom_adv] There are numerous hurdles to getting there, besides the obvious question of safety. As Noah Cowan notes on IndieWire, the physical presence of celebrities is often the secret ingredient behind many festivals staying in the black; would an appearance over Zoom hold the same cache? For festivals that have built their brand on glamorous exclusivity, simply providing screening links for people to watch at home may be an uncomfortable experience in demystification. [custom_adv] So how are each of the major festivals planning for life in the corona era? As anyone trying to organize one will tell you, nothing is concrete and the facts change every day. But here is provisional look at where things stand at the end of July. [custom_adv] With its mid-May fete imperiled by the coronavirus, Cannes initially hoped that a simple delay would suffice: first to late June, then, after the French government extended its lockdown into July, indefinitely. [custom_adv] But on the eve of what had been its scheduled opening, the festival bowed to circumstances, confirming to Variety that there would be no physical edition of Cannes this year. “A ‘festival’ is a collective party, a spectacle that brings together an audience in a given location, in this case on the Croisette, in the presence of thousands of people. [custom_adv] (A move probably made easier by the academy’s decision to allow streaming-only films to compete at next year’s Oscars.) Incidentally, that will be the last Netflix film to be associated with a film festival this year: According to IndieWire, the streamer will not be sending any of its Oscar hopefuls to Venice, Telluride, Toronto, or New York. [custom_adv] In late June, Variety reported more details on what a post-COVID-19 Venice will look like. Films will screen in multiple theaters simultaneously, necessitating a smaller lineup. (There will also be outdoor screenings.) Red carpets will still happen, albeit with socially distanced photographers.
