The COVID-19 pandemic has left the 2020 film festival schedule in total chaos. We haven’t really had a legitimate film festival experience since January/February when Sundance and Berlin were screening films. Basically every festival from March until now has been either canceled or drastically altered with digital screenings.
What does that say about how the upcoming fall festivals will look like? We just don’t know. There have been hints at the possibility of limited physical screenings happening for TIFF and Venice, with the rest of the fest being digitally screened in an online platform. Regardless, it’s going to be a very different experience for cinephiles come September
Today, in an open letter signed by leaders at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival, the leaders of each event have vowed to help each other out, drop the competitive nature and collaborate together to create a cinematic union.
“The art form we love is in crisis,” the letter reads. “Our own organizations have seen unprecedented challenges to our work and our financial security. The pandemic caught each of us as we were preparing for the biggest event of our year in the fall of 2020. We knew we had to adapt. We decided to collaborate as we never have before.”
The letter adds, “This year, we’ve moved away from competing with our colleagues at autumn festivals and commit instead to collaboration. We are sharing ideas and information. We are offering our festivals as a united platform for the best cinema we can find. We’re here to serve the filmmakers, audiences, journalists, and industry members who keep the film ecosystem thriving. We need to do that together.”
I am not ready to speculate on how film festivals will look like in the coming weeks, but it seems as though they will happen, in one form or another, regardless of the pandemic, and for that, I am very thankful. As for what films will screen at these festivals, that’s even more unpredictable. We already know that Netflix is skipping the fall fests, but we don’t really have an idea of what the other studios will decide to do with the likes of Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” and Sofia Coppola’s “On the Rocks.” I have included two of those three titles below, these 16 films constitute the big titles that I believe could show up at Telluride and TIFF.
Ammonite, (Francis Lee)
Another Round, (Thomas Vinterberg)
Good Joe Bell, (Reinaldo Marcus Green)
Spring Blossom (Suzanne Lindon)
True Mothers (Naomi Kawase)
On The Rocks (Sofia Coppola)
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
Mangrove (Steve McQueen)
Lover's Rock (Steve McQueen)
There Is No Evil (Mohammad Rasoulof)
Undine (Christian Petzoldt)
Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)
Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)
Soul (Pete Docter)
Deep Water (Adrian Lyne)
Respect (Liesl Tommy)
The venues won’t be crowded and it looks like TIFF will be playing it very safe with this edition, downgrading their lineup to the just 1/6 of the usual amount of films. I expect a combination of Sundance, Berlin, and Cannes titles along with very few world premieres.