We’ve spoken at length about the effect of coronavirus on music festivals, cancelling Coachella, Glastonbury’s 50th anniversary shindig, and just about every major event you were looking forward to this summer. Well, there’s another wave of cancellations that are bound to break your heart: film festivals look to be cancelled or postponed for the remainder of 2020 too.
Though the majority of film festivals tend to be haughty, chinstroke-y places for critics and stars to brag about seeing Oscar-buzz movies earlier than others, the excitement and hype that brews there is palpable. Without Sundance, we wouldn’t have been itching to see Call Me By Your Name. Without Cannes, Parasite might have struggled to become the first Korean film to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
With Cannes officially postponed and the fate of others, like Venice, Toronto, Tribeca and London all being thrown into disarray, it’s nice to hear some good news for once. Yup, YouTube and Tribeca Film Festival are joining forces to launch a brand new digital movie event that they hope will capture the cinematic spirit we’d otherwise miss out on in 2020.
Gathering feature length films, documentaries, shorts and panel events from across a number of festivals, including Tribeca, Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Sundance, Berlin, New York, San Sebastian, Karlovy Vary, London and Locarno Film Festival, the event is titled ‘We Are One’, and will be free for everybody to stream via YouTube for 10 days. The films are expected to come from outside of the ‘Competition’ strands of those events, giving smaller films the chance to reach a wider audience than even a glitzy Cannes premiere will allow.
There will be a mix of new and old titles on the cards when the event officially kicks off on 29 May. What might we get? Well, with rumours of The French Dispatch being set to bow at the now-cancelled Cannes (we won’t hold our breaths), there might be some super exciting things that you’ll be able to get a fun first look at before they bow in cinemas later in the year and throughout 2021.