The French-based international film festival will not take place in June, despite earlier discussions, given the current and continuous growth of the COVID-19 pandemic, but organizers are still exploring different options for this year’s edition.

Festival de Cannes said in a statement: ‘Following the French President’s statement, on Monday, April 13th, we acknowledged that the postponement of the 73rd International Cannes Film Festival, initially considered for the end of June to the beginning of July, is no longer an option. It is clearly difficult to assume that the Festival de Cannes could be held this year in its original form.’

‘Nevertheless, since yesterday evening we have started many discussions with professionals, in France and abroad. They agree that the Festival de Cannes, an essential pillar for the film industry, must explore all contingencies allowing to support the year of Cinema by making Cannes 2020 real, in a way or another,’ the organizers added.

©FESTIVAL DE CANNES

Following their 19^th March announcement that the 2020 edition wouldn’t be held in May, the festival was sketching a tentative strategy to postpone the event until the end of June or possibly through the beginning of July. Unfortunately, the continued rise of casualties caused by the coronavirus in France, as well as in the rest of the world, has made it impossible to move ahead with a summer festival.

In a televised interview on Monday evening, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said that festivals would be banned until the middle of July. Thierry Frémaux, the festival director, also told Variety that turning it into a virtual event ‘wouldn’t work’.

A possible outcome is for Cannes to be pushed to the fall, but such a timeline would be problematic for the festival circuit because September already has the Venice, Toronto and San Sebastian film festivals. October will see Mipcom taking place in Cannes for three days until 15^th October 2020. Merely putting the festival together in the French Riviera town would take about a month.

There is no news from Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight, either, which usually run parallel to Festival de Cannes. They have yet to make any announcements on the matter, and the Cannes Film Market, which is also expected to unfold alongside the festival as always, has not made any decisions as to whether it will move to a digital platform in mid-June/late July of this year.

Since its first and much anticipated edition after World War II in 1946, Festival de Cannes has only been cancelled once back in 1968 because of the nationwide student riots, in which French New Wave legends François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard also participated. For the global film community, the festival’s cancellation would surely have a major impact, mostly for sales agents and distributors. After all, the Cannes film market is the year’s key event of movie deals. Last year’s film market reported a record of over 12,500 participants.

But there is another aspect that makes this festival so important. Besides its inestimable value to filmmakers, producers, agents and distributors, Festival de Cannes is crucial in positioning foreign-language movies into a commercial landscape—not to mention the festival circuit and the major awards ceremonies. The Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, the European Film Awards, the Spanish Goya Awards and the French Cesar Awards, among many others, have often drawn winners from Cannes. Last year alone, three of the five foreign-language movies nominated at the Oscars had their premiere at Festival de Cannes. ‘Parasite’ (2019) was the festival’s darling, making history with four statuettes, including a first Academy Award for the coveted Best Picture.

Despite many other festivals going the digital route this year in light of the coronavirus pandemic, both the Venice Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival have stated that they will not host their events virtually.

Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux insists that should the option to host the festival physically drop, they will look for other alternatives to showcase the films, but that they will categorically steer clear of the digital alternative.

‘(For) Cannes, its soul, its history, its efficiency, it’s a model that wouldn’t work. What is a digital festival? A digital competition? We should start by asking rights holders if they agree,’ Fremaux tells Variety.

Hinting towards a few titles to be highlighted in this year’s edition, Fremaux added, ‘Films by Wes Anderson or Paul Verhoeven on a computer? Discovering “Top Gun 2” or (Pixar’s) “Soul” elsewhere than in (a) theater? These films have been postponed to be shown on a big screen; why would we want to show them before, on a digital device?’

THIERRY FREMAUX © BRIGITTE LACOMBE

‘Directors of “films” are driven by the idea of showing their movies on a big screen and sharing them with others at events like festivals, not for their works to end up on an iPhone.

‘If all the festivals are canceled, we will have to think of a way to showcase films, to avoid wasting a year, but I don’t think a precarious and improvised alternative of Cannes or Venice — no sooner done than forgotten — would be the solution’, Fremaux further elaborated.

Venice Film Festival’s Alberto Barbera seems to be on the same page as Fremaux on this matter. He disclosed in an interview with Italian news agency ANSA over the weekend that he is currently not taking into consideration any digital options. In the interview, he was weighing in on the Toronto Film Festival’s co-heads Joana Vicente and Cameron Bailey’s statement that they were ‘looking at both on-site and digital innovations’ for their event.

ALBERTO BARBERA © ANDREAS RENTZ

‘Toronto is a different type of festival, not comparable to Cannes or Venice,’ said Barbera, who also added that although it’s unclear at this point how things will develop, they are not considering dropping the physical aspect of their event.

A spokesperson for Venice told Variety on Monday, ‘The Venice Film Festival cannot be replaced by an online event.’ He went on to add, ‘there is obviously the possibility that we use technology for some initiatives,’ but that at present ‘it’s too early for this to be decided.’

The decision to digitalize their events doesn’t come without its own share of challenges for the festivals that chose to go down this path. This new approach has given birth to concerns regarding piracy, distribution and rights, among other issues. Given the uncertainty of the current global crisis, how the organizers will choose to deal with these obstacles remains to be seen.

For now, the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival are going ahead with their plans to host their events in September, and the Cannes Film Festival is still considering to go forward with this year’s edition at a later date, possibly in June or July, having postponed their initial May event.