From an empty movie theater in Paris, organizers of the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday announced the films that would have played there in May had it not been canceled by the pandemic.
The selections were an exercise in what-might-have-been for Cannes, the international French festival that for the last 73 years has been one the most prestigious and glitzy annual gatherings of cinema. Cannes, originally slated for mid-May, considered postponing to July but gave up on a 2020 edition.
Hearing what would have premiered on the Crosiette this year offered a tantalizing picture of a canceled Cannes. Two films by “12 Years a Slave” filmmaker Steve McQueen — “Mangrove” and “Lover’s Rock” — had been headed to Cannes, said festival director Thierry Fremaux, as was Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” and Pete Docter’s Pixar film “Soul.”
Fremaux announced 56 movies that were selected from a record 2,067 submissions that poured in despite the health crisis. “I can see that film is alive and kicking,” said Fremaux, sitting on the stage of the UGC Normandie cinema in Paris alongside Cannes’ president, Pierre Lescure.
The selection announcement, usually made in April before teeming throngs of international journalists, was instead presented during a TV interview that streamed online and aired on Canal Plus.
