It is truly beginning to feel like we’re in a time loop. It was only a year ago when the Cannes Film Festival announced that Spike Lee would be the Jury President for the film festival. Of course, that event was canceled due to the pandemic. Now, a year later, Cannes once again announced Spike Lee is the Jury President, and the event is just as confident as ever that the festival will begin this July.
According to the Cannes Film Festival, “preparations are in full swing” for the upcoming 74th edition of the event. And as part of that, Spike Lee has been reinstated as President of the Jury that will help hand out this year’s Palme d’Or. Of course, this is exactly what happened last year when the pandemic was just beginning and we know that didn’t go as planned. This year, however, Cannes has been pushed to July and the festival organizers have, once again, committed to running a festival, even in these rather uncertain times.
“Throughout the months of uncertainty we’ve just been through, Spike Lee has never stopped encouraging us,” Said Pierre Lescure, President of the Cannes Film Festival. “This support is finally coming to fruition and we could not have hoped for a more powerful personality to chart our troubled times”
Festival director Thierry Fremaux added, “His enthusiasm and passion for cinema has given us a huge boost of energy to prepare the great Festival that everybody has been waiting for. The party will be great, we simply can’t wait!”
Just a few months ago, Fremaux and other organizers had talked publicly about the festival moving to the summer or even as far as this fall. In recent weeks, after the official delay to July, it would appear that organizers are planning for this summer to happen, no matter what. Of course, as we’ve seen over the last 12 months, trying to plan anything during this time is rather risky. But hopefully, with the announcement that Spike Lee is once again going to be on the jury, the folks at Cannes know that there’s nothing stopping them from running a festival this year. We’ll just have to wait and see.