8:58 am PST 1/27/2021
in
Scott Roxborough
In response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the major French event has rescheduled the dates for this year’s edition.
The Cannes Film Festival gave in to the inevitable, announcing on Wednesday that it will move this year’s event from May to July due to security concerns surrounding the new coronavirus pandemic.
“As announced last fall, the Cannes Film Festival has reserved the right to change its dates depending on how the global health situation has developed,” Cannes said in a statement. “Initially scheduled for May 11-22, 2021, the Festival will now run from Tuesday 6 to Saturday, July 17, 2021.”
The change, although expected, will have a domino effect throughout the festival circuit. The Venice Film Festival is scheduled to start on September 1st. The new Cannes dates mean that there will be less than two months between Europe’s No. 1 and No. 2 festivals, creating a potential showdown as the two events compete for world premieres and the power of the stars on the red carpet.
Cannes was forced to cancel the festival last year amid the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Venice was carried out as planned, although with strict security measures, including masks and social detachment.
Berlin, another of Europe’s three big festivals, opted for a hybrid model this year. Berlin will host an exclusively online event in March and an additional face-to-face festival in the German capital in June.
France, along with most of Europe, remains confined amid the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Immunization programs have been launched across the continent, but progress has been slow. France, which hoped to inoculate a million citizens against COVID-19 by the end of January, now seems unlikely to achieve that goal before mid-February, at the very least. Things got worse with a dispute between the European Union and the UK-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca over a delay in vaccine deliveries.