I’m sorry haters, but I absolutely love how the Cannes Film Festival has been acting during this pandemic. They literally are in don’t-give-a-fuck-mode as far as not appeasing to the hounds and just calling it quits for 2020. After all, it seems as though it’ll take a cataclysmic apocalyptic event for Cannes to announce an overall cancelation of the event. Hell, despite its sidebar sections calling it quits today, which include Directors’ Fortnight, Critics’ Week & ACID Parallel Sections, Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux is still chugging along, looking at every possible option to make the fest happen this year. Bless his maverick heart.
In a new interview with Fremaux, the Artistic Director of the Cannes Film Festival is now telling Variety that Cannes might show up in the fall, perhaps in a collaboration with the Venice Film Festival. Fantastique. Obviously, no details about this potentially immense partnership were divulged, but this could be just what the doctor ordered to reignite a film industry completely shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Cannes Film Festival wants to be present in the fall to contribute to all this,” said Fremaux. “The cinema and its industries are threatened, we will have to rebuild, affirm again its importance with energy, unity and solidarity!” He added, “As every year, I speak a lot to Alberto Barbera, who is himself worried, obviously. Since the beginning of the crisis, we have raised the possibility of doing something together if Cannes was canceled. We’re continuing to discuss it. Other festivals have invited us: Locarno, San Sebastian, Deauville. These are gestures that touch us a lot. And in Lyon, at the Lumiere Festival [in October] we have planned to host a number of world premieres as part of the program.”
However, Fremaux again confirmed that, if Cannes does happen this year, it won’t be digital and it won’t be something smaller than it usually is:
“As we’ve said, there won’t be a virtual festival because it would make no sense considering what the Cannes Film Festival is,” he explained. “And there will be neither a shorter festival or one with fewer sections. If the Cannes Film Festival takes place, it will do so in full possession of its image and resources. If it does take place, it will mean that life has won.”
As for that elusive lineup of competition films which we’ve been trying to decipher these last few months, Fremaux confirms he is still reviewing film submissions with the goal to eventually announce some kind of lineup with the Cannes stamp of approval. The problem, of course, is that, if a lineup is indeed announced, the festival first needs to take place.
“In order to announce an Official Selection with films, one must have the approval of rightsholders, so we’ll see. In any case, we are working on several hypotheses,” Fremaux said. “The denomination ‘Official Selection’ implies that the festival is organized under its initial form. As we’ve said, it’s difficult to imagine that, as of today.”
This is all music to my ears.
Here’s the real problem Fremaux and, really, most of the world’s businesses are facing right now: unpredictability. We don't know enough about this virus to truly know how life is going to look like even a month from now. There is no point in even theorizing how Cannes can move forward when we are clueless about how, even just, tomorrow will look like. We’ve never experienced a moment in history quite like this one. Sure, the 1918 pandemic happened, but that was the pre-internet/pre-globalization age. This is a whole other world we live in, filled with the obligation of connectivity between countries and nations. This economic reliance for one another may have to change, whether short or long-term, for us to reignite normal life — does anyone actually believe in a global event like Cannes, with hundreds of critics and industry people from all parts of the world flying to the Croisette, actually happening this fall? That’s the million-dollar question and it just can’t be answered right now.