Cannes 2020: Official Selection Will Be Announced in June, Despite Festival Being Canceled

As predicted here two months ago, despite its cancelation, the Cannes Film Festival will announce its Official Selection of movies in June. Cannes boss Thierry Frémaux has also indicated his desire to have these films selected at other festivals in the fall, including this September’s Venice International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.

In an exclusive interview with Screen Daily, Frémaux explained that the films highlighted in the Official Selection will also be scheduled for theatrical release between now and the spring of 2021.

“The selection probably won’t be under the usual structured format that we all know with the Competition, Un Certain Regard, and Out of Competition sections,” Frémaux told Screen Daily. “It would have been ridiculous to behave as if nothing had happened. But in our heart of hearts what we want to do is promote the films that we saw and loved. We received films from around the world, magnificent works, and it’s our duty to help them find their audience. Once we’ve announced the list, the aim is to start organizing events in cinemas. Professionals the world over with whom we’re in contact on a daily basis, tell us that this represents an opportunity for their projects.”

Although many films decided to take part in this selection process, Frémaux added that some directors, whose films had already been selected for the 2020 lineup, have decided to wait it out and take the risk of being reconsidered for the 2021 edition.

Films chosen for the 2020 Official Selection will receive a “Cannes 2020” stamp of approval:

“We’ll go to Toronto, Deauville, Angoulême, San Sebastian, New York, Busan in Korea and even the Lumière festival in Lyon, which is a festival of contemporary and classical cinema, which will host numerous films. And with Venice, we want to go even further and present films together.”

Fremaux also teased a few films that would have taken part at this year’s festivities, including Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” (which he calls “a beautiful film”) Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” and Nanni Moretti’s “Three Stories.” The latter two decided to part ways from Cannes and not be included in the official selection —Moretti and Anderson are now aiming for Venice.

It only makes sense to do this. Cannes competition titles tend to fare very well at the European arthouse box-office, mostly due to the especially if the Cannes is being stamped on them. It's a “prestige” thing. As theatres will likely struggle to reopen, the industry will need these Cannes films to build advanced buzz and kickstart European ticket sales post-pandemic. Venice must be pissed off though, this probably means, despite Fremaux wanting to partner, that these Cannes-stamped films will likely not make it to Venice because that festival’s boss, Alberto Barbera wants exclusivity.

Now that we have scratched off Cannes until, at least, 2021, and takin into consideration what we now know from different sources and rumors, we can, more or less, snip down my original list of the 35 contenders to this list of 18 films:

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria”
Leos Carax’s “Annette”
Nadav Lapid “Ahed’s Knee”
Francois Ozon’s “Summer of 85”
Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island”
Ari Folman “Where is Anne Frank?”
Maiwenn's "ADN"
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Wife of a Spy”
Naomi Kawase’s “Come Morning”
Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman“
Michel Franco’s “Lo que algunos soñaron”
Laurent Cantet’s “Arthur Rambo”
Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Petrov’s Flu”
Thomas Vinterberg’s “Druk”
Ulrich Seidl "Böse Spiele"
Ana Lily Amirpour’s “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon”
Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir II”
Quentin Dupieux’s “Mandibules”