Cannes Film Festival Postponed Until Late June

It was inevitably coming, but the Cannes Film Festival has finally announced the postponement of the prestigious event which was set to take place from May 12 to May 23rd.

According to Variety, Cannes isn’t full-on canceling the event and is currently exploring other possible dates to continue at the end of June until the beginning of July. THR’s Boyd Van Hoeij tweeted earlier today that the dates being considered by the festival are June 23rd to July 10th. That’s 17 days, so maybe that’s just the timeframe they want the 10-day festival to take place in.

The thought of Cannes even taking place in late June still seems a tad too unrealistic at the moment, but, who knows, maybe some miracle vaccine or drug will pop out of the woodwork before then. Doubt it. France is only getting worse with over 10,000 cases and 274 deaths as of yesterday. My guess is that Cannes announces its lineup before it gets canceled, just to officially show what would have been in competition — that would, ensuingly, give fests like TIFF and NYFF an easier time to curate their own lineups.

The full statement from Cannes said:

“At this time of global health crisis, our thoughts go to the victims of the Covid-19 and we express our solidarity with all of those who are fighting the disease.

“As soon as the development of the French and international health situation will allow us to assess the real possibility, we will make our decision known, in accordance with our ongoing consultation with the French Government and Cannes’ City Hall as well as with the Festival’s Board Members, Film industry professionals and all the partners of the event.

“In the meantime, the Festival de Cannes lends its vocal support to all of those who firmly call on everyone to respect the general lockdown, and ask to show solidarity in these difficult times for the entire world.”

If the film festival ends up not happening at all this year then that would mean a stacked fall movie festival circuit with TIFF, Venice, and Telluride scrambling to nab world premieres left and right.

The orphaned movies which were rumored to be part of Cannes 2020:

Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island”
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria”
Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta”
Leos Carax’s “Annette”
Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”
Nanni Moretti “Tre Piani”
Nadav Lapid “Ahed’s Knee”
Sofia Coppola’s “On the Rocks”
Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland”
Laurent Cantet’s “Arthur Rambo”
Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman“
Francois Ozon’s “Summer of 85”
Michel Franco’s “Lo que algunos soñaron”
Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Petrov’s Flu”
Thomas Vinterberg’s “Druk”
Ulrich Seidl "Böse Spiele"
Maiwenn's "ADN"
Ana Lily Amirpour’s “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon”
Taylor Sheridan's "Those Who Wish Me Dead"
Quentin Dupieux’s “Mandibules”
Xavier Beauvois’ “Drift Away”
Mathieu Amalric’s “Serre Moi Fort”
Nicole Garcia’s “Lisa Redler“
Stéphane Brizé’s ”For Better or For Worse”
Bruno Dumont’s “On A Half Clear Morning“
Daniele Luchetti’s “The Ties”
Hiner Saleem’s “Goodnight, Soldier”
Ann Hui’s “Love After Love”
Danielle Arbid’s “Simple Passion”
Pete Docter’s “Soul”
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy
Naomi Kawase’s “True Mothers”