Here’s a piece I wrote for The Globe and Mail at Cannes.
No mask in sight here, or just a very scant few. The festival is trying really hard to get past this pandemic (watch out Monkey Paws!)
It’s a valiant effort to pretend all is well, but some trades are already predicting the fest will be a major superspreader event. Let’s just wait and see. You can just tell everyone here is so sick and tired of COVID-19 here.
France lifted all mask mandates just days before the festival started. Coincidence? Suffice to say, unlike last year, it is not mandatory to wear a mask at any of the screenings. There’s also none of last year’s mandatory spit test PCRs or the required vaccination passport.
What Cannes will be is a great litmus test for the fall festivals (Venice, Toronto, Telluride). It almost feels like we’re Guinea pigs in a large-scale case study. There are close to 40,000 attendees this year, if all ends well (which I believe will be the case with the mild Omicron variant) then bring on a full-fledged 200+ movie TIFF in September.