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8:58 am PST 01/27/2021
by
Scott Roxborough
In response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the renowned French event has postponed the dates for this year’s edition.
The Cannes Film Festival bowed to the inevitable, announcing on Wednesday that it would move this year’s event from May to July, due to security concerns related to the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.
“As announced last fall, the Cannes Film Festival has reserved the right to modify its dates according to the evolution of the global health situation,” Cannes said in a statement. “Initially scheduled for May 11 to 22, 2021, the Festival will now take place from Tuesday July 6 to Saturday July 17, 2021.”
The move, although planned, will have a domino effect on the festival circuit. The Venice Film Festival is scheduled to start on September 1. New Cannes dates mean there will be less than two months between Europe’s No.1 and No.2 festivals, creating a potential showdown as the two events vie for world premieres and carpet star power red.
Cannes was forced to cancel the festival last year amid the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Venice went as planned, but with strict security measures including masks and social distancing.
Berlin, the other major European festival, has opted for a hybrid model this year. Berlin will host an online-only event in March and another in-person festival in the German capital in June.
France, like most of Europe, remains stranded in the midst of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Vaccination programs have been rolled out across the continent, but progress has been slow. France, which hoped to vaccinate a million citizens against COVID-19 by the end of January, now seems unlikely to achieve this goal before mid-February at the earliest. Things got worse with a dispute between the European Union and UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca over a delay in vaccine delivery.
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