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Coronavirus forces postponement of Cannes: Will festival go virtual or replace Venice?

By Veronica Elizabeth Bruno

CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 19: Barry Alexander Brown, director Spike Lee posing with the Grand Prix award for 'BlacKkKlansman' and Laura Harrier next to him at the Palme D'Or Winner Photocall during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 19, 2018 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 19: Barry Alexander Brown, director Spike Lee posing with the Grand Prix award for 'BlacKkKlansman' and Laura Harrier next to him at the Palme D'Or Winner Photocall during the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 19, 2018 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) /
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After trying to hold out that their festival would stick to its original dates in May, the Cannes Festival organizations called it off, but hope that it will now take place in June-July. Here are other ways this could go.

The biggest film festival in the industry, the Cannes Festival, stubbornly held out hope that the show would go on, despite all the news about the Coronavirus pandemic last week. But after South by Southwest (SXSW) canceled its March showing and the Tribeca Film Festival announced its postponement last week, it seemed like it was a matter of time that the glamorous festival that takes place in the South of France would follow suit.

Despite the World Health Organization’s declaration of the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic a week ago, Cannes was still holding out that it would proceed as scheduled just a few days ago, despite worsening conditions in Europe and government bans on large social gatherings.

There’s one rumor that the festival delayed calling it off because they lack insurance to cover the festival’s cancellation in the case of a pandemic such as COVID-19. Rumors aside, Cannes is considered the pre-eminent industry event where deal-making and offers inimitable networking opportunities among industry producers, distributors, buyers, and programmers.

The prestigious festival often sets the tone for awards season, with last year’s Palme D’Or winner, Parasite, going on to win the Best Picture Oscar this year. Many international cinephiles prize the Cannes festival’s major prize over all others.

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Cannes organizers are mulling over several scenarios, but the choice they prefer is to simply move the festival events up a month or two, targeting late June or early July, in the hope that the novel coronavirus pandemic will die down by then. However, even this best-case scenario will mess with films that were hoping to premiere at the festival before their summer release dates. Some of these movies may now consider other smaller festivals scheduled after Cannes.

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The proposed June/July dates would now fall closer to the other important film festivals on the cinephile calendar, the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, both in September. With Italy’s COVID-19 cases continuing to soar, the status of the Venice event has to be called into question.

Venice was once considered the most exclusive cinema event in the world, but Cannes was conceived after Mussolini’s corruption tarnished Venice’s reputation. If Cannes considers even later dates than the summer, there are certain scenarios where it could replace Venice in the film festival calendar.

This could happen, with several industry members skeptical that the June or July time frame will work out at all for Cannes, if conditions worsen due to COVID-19 in Italy and the rest of Europe. Gianluca Curti, head to Rome’s Minerva Pictures, told Variety:

"“How can you imagine having a festival like Cannes at the end of June? Who’s going to go into the Salle Lumiere (in June-July) with more than 2,000 seats to watch a movie? I wouldn’t enter it even with a double (anti-coronavirus) mask! Who is going to sit at a table with people from all over the world and from countries where the pandemic will still be active (at that stage)?”"

Cannes also launched a virtual market, Marche du Film, to run alongside the marquee festival. This could offer an opportunity to screen the festival’s features on a completely online format. Considering their strong anti-Netflix stance, proceeding fully digital seems very unlikely for the marquee festival, seeped in glam and tradition. With headlining films such as Wonder Woman 84 considering going streaming, rather than release in theaters, due to COVID-19, putting the entire Cannes festival on the online platform may be the way to go this year.

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“The biggest disappointment would be to not have that curation from Cannes,” says Tom Bernard, co-head of Sony Pictures Classics, in Variety , covering the fallout to the fest. “Cannes highlights the best films in the world and puts them into the zeitgeist.”

“I don’t think there is anyone who can say whether, by the end of June, the health scare will be over,” said producer Alexander Rodnyansky (Leviathan, Loveless), about the new timeframe Cannes is targeting.

As of now, no dates have been confirmed and like so much in sport and entertainment, the Cannes Film Festival is waiting on the health of the world to proceed forward with definitive dates for public screenings and events. Same with the Tribeca, and likely the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals. All will wait news to see if the COVID-19 pandemic subsides by summer.

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For more information about COVID-19, visit the CDC’s website or the website for your state’s Department of Health.

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