La Rochelle International Film Festival
Dear friends,
For over a week now, we have been learning, with sadness, of the cancellation or postponement of festivals we love: Cinéma du Réel, Itinérances in Alès, Festival du cinéma de Brive, Cinélatino in Toulouse, Festival de films de femmes de Créteil, Festival International du Film d’Aubagne, Séries Mania, Bergamo Film Meeting in Italy, Visions du Réel in Switzerland, Sofia International Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, etc.
Day after day, this list continues to grow and our warmest thoughts go out to our Italian colleagues of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, a major event of heritage cinema, a partner and friend of the Festival, which was meant to take place just before us, from 20 to 28 June.
As for us, we continue to hope that the Festival La Rochelle Cinéma can still be held from 26 June to 5 July and we continue to prepare this forty-eighth edition, as always, with passion.
Last night, while the entire profession was wondering whether or not the Cannes Festival might be postponed, we learned with surprise that “the main hypothesis would be to simply postpone it until late June/early July”.
If this option is confirmed, we would be deprived of some of our precious associates (projectionists, technicians, interpreters, press officers…) who work for both festivals and who are already heavily impacted by the cancellation of dozens of event.
The Festival La Rochelle Cinéma is above all a public festival (86 492 admissions in 2019) and we are very attached to this status, but we also host a thousand professionals, distributors, cinema owners, partners, and journalists, who would not be able to attend both events.
During this health catastrophe, above all, we would like the situation to calm down as quickly as possible for everyone and we remain supportive of all those who, on a daily basis, are fighting this virus that will continue to wreak havoc across the globe in the coming months.
If this pandemic were to enduringly establish itself in Europe, the United States, Latin America, Africa, or elsewhere, we would surely not feel much like celebrating in late June and we would potentially be obliged to cancel this forty-eighth edition.
While we wait for better tidings, the reopening of cinemas, and the revival of all the festivals, take care of yourselves and revise your classics on your various screens.
The FEMA team
