If Cannes cancels, expect this year’s movie calendar to be tossed into the shredder

Cannes is cancelled. Not officially – the famed French film festival is still exploring “all contingencies” – but with the fest’s parallel Directors’ Fortnight, Critics’ Week and Association for the Distribution of Independent Cinema (ACID) programs this week announcing cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cannes Film Festival, as the movie industry knows it, is quashed for 2020. And that spells disaster for anyone who enjoys cinema.

Sure, there are now plans for a virtual marketplace to compensate for the lack of a real-deal Marché du Film – which last year attracted more than 12,000 deal-makers. And maybe the notoriously technology-adverse Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux will have a come-to-streaming moment, and push some of this year’s programming toward secure online presentations. But all the digital innovation and brave industry faces cannot mask the depressing fact that the world’s most prestigious, glamorous, and – yes, even in the era of Netflix – important film festival has fallen. And as goes Cannes, so goes the rest of the film industry.

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With no films making their debut along the Croisette, expect there to be a natural domino effect hitting the rest of the film festival landscape – if such a thing can even exist this year. The Venice film fest, held at the end of August every year, looks like an increasingly doubtful proposition this summer, no matter if the public-health situation in Europe miraculously turns around or not. If you were a studio head or movie producer, would you want to take even the smallest risk by sending your directors and actors to a country that was a hot zone of infection?

From there, it is all too easy to imagine the Telluride, Toronto and New York festivals crumpling, too. TIFF, for its part, says it is committed to its Sept. 10-20 date in some fashion, and is optimistically exploring both on-site and digital opportunities. But even if in-person screenings do become a legitimate option by the fall, international attendance will likely plummet, and it is not a leap to predict that the high-profile Hollywood talent who treat Toronto like a giant media junket, and who are thus so critical to the festival’s international footprint, will stay home. And then, all of a sudden, the 2020 film calendar has been tossed into the shredder. At least in terms of the movies discerning adults might actually want to watch.

Even if theatres reopen in the fall – which is a big if at the moment – removing the festival circuit from the industry equation is devastating. No festivals means no launch pads for the kind of independent, foreign-language and eclectic fare that dominates the all-important autumn movie season. Instead, the only offerings will be the more mainstream productions that have been held over by the major Hollywood studios from this spring and summer.

Think about last year’s fall and winter season, which featured such original, adult-minded films as Uncut Gems, Hustlers, Pain and Glory, Jojo Rabbit and eventual Oscar champion Parasite. All were launched at film festivals, and all thrived thanks to critical word-of-mouth gained on the fest circuit. It is hard enough to send a smaller film like the French-language romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire into the modern marketplace – impossible without the significant buzz it gained by premiering at Cannes last spring.

Even leaving aside how festivals serve as essential launch pads for anti-blockbuster fare, the deals made and relationships formed on the sidelines of Cannes, TIFF and elsewhere help ensure that the pipeline of production is as strong the next year as it is this. Virtual marketplaces are interesting propositions, but nothing replaces the immediate impact of in-person connection, especially in a business built on relationships.

In other words, it’s time to expect lots of held-over superheroes (Wonder Woman 1984), super-spies (No Time to Die) and super-franchises (Top Gun: Maverick) this fall, and little in the way of serious drama, or anything with a hint of surprise.

There is always a chance that indie distributors will gamble with productions untested by the festival waters, and send them into the market praying that good work will be discovered and celebrated. But that's betting a lot at a time when there's no margin for error.

Which means dedicated moviegoers have to ask ourselves if we’re ready for a year without the movies we tend to love. A year without discovery. The news out of Cannes suggests we better get prepared. Somehow.

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