The biggest cinema meeting in the world should have started on Tuesday, May 12. Obliged to cancel its 73rd edition, the Cannes Film Festival was forced to imagine something else instead: a “Cannes beyond the walls”, an online film market and a “Cannes 2020” label. Even if it means expanding the Festival’s digital borders?
It’s a gloomy May for moviegoers. Instead of talking about the filmmakers vying for the Palme d’Or, we hear more about the new Netflix series. Films, stars, the rise of markets and the media. For more than 70 years, Cannes has celebrated this unique, but impossible to organize, alchemy in the era of the coronavirus. Failing to have a flying red carpet for each of the expected stars, the biggest event in the cinema universe had to be canceled, as in summer 1939 and May 1968. Today, all that remains for Pierre Lescure , president of the Festival, and its general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, is to be combative to preserve the spirit of Cannes. Perhaps for that, they always avoid pronouncing the word “cancellation”. The cinema showcase, how does it want to keep its world leadership until the next edition on site? As early as April, Thierry Frémaux refused to transform the largest cinema event into digital publishing, unlike (certainly, much smaller) festivals such as Cinéma du réel in Paris, Nyon in Switzerland, Vues d’Afrique at Canada or Gabès Cinéma Fen in Tunisia, all of whom have awarded their awards
The “Cannes 2020” label
A three-stage cinematographic rocket was born. First of all, Frémaux plans to save the films already selected (including Tre pani by Nanni Moretti, The French dispatch by Wes Anderson and Benedetta by Paul Verhœven) and the influence of the Festival by temporarily replacing the prizes and the Palme gold by a label. This Cannes 2020 brand will be launched with the official announcement of the film list in early June. Like Olivier Py who, against all odds, had announced in a video conference the plays of the Avignon Festival to bring the 2020 edition to life at least in the imagination, and this finally a few days before confinement and the official cancellation of the festival in the city of the popes. (…)
“Cannes outside the walls”
With its label “Cannes 2020”, the Cannes Festival also wishes to set up an “Cannes outside the walls” event. Obviously without currently having signed agreements and therefore without giving details, Thierry Frémaux mentioned in an interview with L’Obs his wish that Cannes films will be present in practically all the major festivals of this year: “We will go to the Festivals from Toronto, Deauville, Angoulême, San Sebastian, New York, Busan in Korea and even the Lumière Festival in Lyon. And in theaters in France. ” As for the collaboration with the Venice Film Festival, considered by many observers as a rival to the Cannes Film Festival since the Golden Lion awarded to Roma, directed by the Mexican Alfonso Cuaron and produced by Netflix, Frémaux replied: “No , there is no competition between festivals. Everyone has their place and Cannes has their own. ” (…)
Cannes Film Festival and Netflix?
Who still remembers the 2017 edition? Before reporting the Palme d’Or and the Oscar with Parasite three years ago, South Korean director Bong Joonho was proud to be in the running for the Palme d’Or with Okja. But soon after congratulating itself on having received $ 50 million from Netflix to make “the film I wanted to make”, the Cannes Film Festival decided to ban the Palme from films released online. Since then, in turn, Netflix has boycotted the official Cannes selection while buying after the 2019 prize list the Grand Jury Prize, Atlantique, from Franco-Senegalese Mati Diop. The 2020 edition could have been the year of a new cohabitation between Cannes and Netflix. And the incredible growth of the platform during the confinement period has certainly further reinforced in the cinema industry the fear of a break with the youth: “The platforms are stronger than ever, especially in the younger generation. But cinema can live with them, as it has done for a long time with television. ”
While accusing the streaming giant of using “the mythology of cinema by going to find its greatest authors and, let’s say, makes a big profit of it”, Thierry Frémaux had also affirmed in the columns of L’Obs: “We are is therefore fighting to preserve the future which is also theirs. ” Last but not least, originally, he had planned to screen out of competition – the new film by Spike Lee, president of the jury of the Cannes Festival 2020 finally canceled: “And to tell you the truth, he showed us a very beautiful film produced by Netflix. (…) It was the surprise he gave us. It would have been a beautiful Cannes. ” Following the coronavirus crisis, DA 5 bloods, a film about the Vietnam War, will be released on June 12 as a world premiere on Netflix.
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