Cannes Film Festival Boss Says Event Will Never Go Virtual, Still Believes July Date is Possible

So, I actually watched this Thierry Fremaux video interview from French station TV5 Monde. It’s quite clear that the optimism he has for a July-set edition of the Cannes Film Festival is sky high. He’s now even refusing to acknowledge that the rumoured October date will happen. He wants July and he believes it will be a glorious earth-shattering event.

A few points he makes:

• He doesn’t necessarily say July is a set date. He mentions that they had three dates set for a possible Cannes (May, July or Fall), May is clearly not happening and now we’re onto July which he is confident could happen due to vaccinations and cases getting better.
  
  He says Cannes will be the first major world event to go back to some kind of normal. It will be a festive event with people dining and having fun.

• The host asks him “No masks?” and Fremaux replies, “That’s the goal, no masks, but there will always be people who will enter the Lumiere or DeBussy theatres wanting to wear their masks and that is just going to be a reality and not a problem at all.”

• “There will never be a virtual component for Cannes”, proclaims Fremaux He’s says he will not adhere to “frigid technology.” That is not what Cannes has ever been about. It is a warm festival that needs to maintain that spirit. He wants to hold a festival where people chat in the hallways post-screening and fight about the movies they just saw.

A reason why Celine Sciamma’s ”Petite Maman” decided to premiere at Berlin may be because if Cannes does happen this year then the list of potential films that would premiere there would be astounding. A total of seven former Palme D’or winners may premiere new films.

This is the list of 30 possible Cannes premieres I came up with. Obviously, when more intel starts coming in, this list is subject to change: as I

”The French Dispatch” (Wes Anderson)
”Annette” (Leos Carax)
”Ahed’s Knee” (Nadav Lapid)
”Memoria” (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
”Benedetta” (Paul Verhoeven)
”Tre Piani” (Nanni Moretti)
”Bergman Island” (Mia Hansen-Løve)
”Triangle of Sadness” (Ruben Ostlund)
”Titane” (Julia Ducournau)
”Where is Anne Frank?” (Ari Folman)
“On A Half Clear Morning” (Bruno Dumont)
“Petrov’s Flu” (Kirill Serebrennikov)
”Soggy Bottom” (Paul Thomas Anderson)
”Macbeth” (Joel Coen)
”The Way of the Wind” (Terrence Malick)
”Blonde” (Andrew Dominik)
”A Hero” (Asghar Farhadi)
”Blossoms” (Wong Kar-wai)
”The Power of the Dog” (Jane Campion)
”Chocobar” (Lucrecia Martel)
”Paris, 13th District” (Jacques Audiard)
”The Souvenir Part II” (Joanna Hogg)
”The Hand of God” (Paolo Sorrentino)
"Mektoub: Canto Duo" (Abdelatif Kechiche)
”Deception” (Arnaud Desplechin)
”Fire” (Claire Denis)
”Incredible But True” (Quentin Dupieux)
”Flag Day” (Sean Penn)
”Everything Went Fine” (Francois Ozon)