As the coronavirus epidemic progresses and more and more events are canceled or postponed, such as the Mip TV and the Canneséries festival, the question is on everyone's lips: the Cannes Festival, which must welcome the cinema world from May 12 to 23, will it take place?
The stake goes beyond the only sphere of the seventh art: biggest media event after the Olympic Games, the Festival attracts participants from many countries, attracts crowds of onlookers and generates significant benefits for the local economy: restaurants, hotels , businesses and small businesses with, in the balance, thousands of direct or indirect jobs.
As for the Festival management, contacted on Friday morning, we want to be reassuring: "To date, nothing indicates that the Festival will not take place. It is scheduled in two and a half months, we are monitoring developments closely, but it would be premature to rush in today. "
The names of the selected films announced on April 16
In addition to the calendar, which currently plays in favor of this 73rd edition (the other cancellations at Cannes concern events that were to take place in three weeks), the teams indicate that they are "at work" and are diligently preparing for the selection. As proof, the Festival published a press release announcing that the list of films in competition will be unveiled on April 16. What about accreditation requests? Up 9%, a sign that the participants do not, to date, intend to cancel their visit.
Same story at the Palais des Festivals, which rents its premises and provides services for the event. Régis Courvoisier, communications director, recalls that the gauge of the largest projection room, Lumière, is 2,300 seats. If we add to it the other rooms and places, including the immense space where the biggest cinema market in the world is held on the same dates, we are far above the 5,000 seats, maximum gauge authorized for gatherings not prefectural orders. But "not in one and the same place".
The Palace is "used to managing crises"
No worries, therefore, especially since the Palace applies the directives of local authorities, such as cleaning and increased disinfection - four times a day for door handles.
But the Palace, which drains 13,000 indirect jobs with its events, is attentive to the requests of the mayor of Cannes, who asked for state aid to compensate for the economic losses in the region: "We are mobilized and in solidarity with the drivers taxi, hoteliers, restaurateurs, small entrepreneurs linked to the economy of festivals and fairs to both find postponements of our events and so that they obtain aid to compensate for the shortfalls ”, explains the director of communications .
And to recall that the Palace is "used to managing crises", to adapt and equip itself in function, as for the amplified security measures taken for several years against the risk of terrorist attacks.
Two cancellations in sixty years of Festival
But what would happen if we went to stage 3 of prevention against the epidemic, synonymous with drastic measures in matters of public gatherings? "We are not there yet," all say in substance. But if the Festival and the Film Market were to be postponed or canceled, the consequences - economic in particular - could be severe, both for the organizers and internationally.
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Especially for a Cannes Film Festival which has known only two interruptions in more than sixty years of existence: the very first, in 1939, was canceled due to the Second World War, and that of 1968, aborted at the end nine days following the events of May-68.
