Cannes Film Festival likely to get postponed post rise in coronavirus cases in Europe

The Cannes Film Festival, the world’s biggest, may be pushed back to the summer this year from its usual May date because of the Covid-19 crisis, organisers said on Wednesday. The festival, scheduled for 11 to 22 May “will certainly take place in 2021”, a spokesman told Agence France-Presse, but could be postponed to a time between the end of June and the end of July. The festival was cancelled last year, while rival European events in Berlin and Venice went ahead under strict health restrictions. Organisers still need some time “to evaluate the situation at the start of the year” before making a decision, the Cannes spokesman said. The Berlin Film Festival, which usually kicks off in February, said last month it would run this year’s edition in two stages, an online offering for industry professionals in March and a public event in June. In 2019, Cannes’ coveted Palme d’Or was awarded to South Korean film Parasite (2019) by director Bong Joon-ho, which went on to win the first Best Picture Oscar for a non-English film at the Hollywood Academy Awards. The Cannes festival attracts some 45,000 people with official accreditations every year, of whom about 4,500 are journalists. Its Film Market, held alongside the main competition, is the industry’s biggest marketplace for producers, distributors, buyers, and programmers. As per reports, organisers of the Sundance Film Festival have also declared that the drive-in screenings will be cancelled and that only online screenings will be permitted owing to the rise in coronavirus cases in Los Angeles. While the festival is scheduled to take place between 28 January and 3 February in Park City Utah, the drive-ins were set to happen all across California. (With inputs from Agence France-Presse)