The Locarno Film Festival annually takes place every August. It’s an important middle ground festival, connecting the behemoths of Cannes and Venice with riskier and more experimental counterprogramming. Alas, the fest, which has been running since 1946, will not be giving out its famous Golden Leopard award this year as organizers have canceled the 2020 event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [via Variety]
Locarno was set to take place on August 5-15. Locarno artistic director Lili Hinstin said in a statement that organizers “looked at a number of different scenarios” but could not foresee an August-set festival taking place this year.
“For us the priority was to save the physical aspect of the festival, which for us is very closely tied to its setting since Locarno audiences are in this amazing place between a lake and a mountain where you have the Piazza Grande with this gigantic screen,” Hinstin said, adding no digital or virtual component will be added either because “during the immediate post-confinement period I don’t think people will really want to sit in front of their computer screens.”
Unless, of course, people, like myself, cast the movies on their large flatscreen TVs. Anyway, I don’t think this is a question of people not wanting to watch a movie in their homes. Most journalists will have to do that in the fall with a slew of Oscar-bait titles likely to be released on VOD, not to mention a possible digital edition of TIFF and Venice on the horizon. Welcome to the new normal, at least for this year.
