The Cannes Film Festival may be screening Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja” and Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories” over the next couple of weeks, but they have told Netflix — and other streaming services — that starting in 2018, unless you commit to a theatrical release in France, you can’t play in Competition. The announcement sent shockwaves through the industry, with some cheering Cannes’ commitment to the theatrical experience, while others criticized the company for not adapting to changing times. Netflix themselves responded, citing the incident as another example of the “establishment” resisting them. Either way, this has been fascinating to watch, and certainly, other festivals have likely been seeing how things unfold, and evaluating their own positions on how to handle Netflix films, which go straight to their service, with very limited day-and-date theatrical plays.
Screen Daily reached out to a few different festival heads, and the responses are interesting. Essentially, while they all applaud Cannes, pretty much all of them stop short of criticizing Netflix (or even naming them) directly, and acknowledge that it’s important to adapt with the times. Here’s are the comments from two of the biggest film festivals in the world — Venice and TIFF:
Venice Film Festival director, Alberto Barbera
“First and foremost, I would like to express my solidarity with Fremaux. This must not have been an easy decision,” he said. “These are the final throes of a market that has evolved, changed too rapidly without establishing any rules. There are so many interests and motives at play, from the theatre owners, to the distributors, sales, producers and auteurs, but the role of a festival must be independent of it all, its role is to spread quality cinema, to select, bring to light, and support cinema as such and not on the basis of where it may be seen.”
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“I personally believe that cinema remains an experience to be enjoyed in theatres, but we cannot ignore the fact that with the rise of new platforms we cannot go back in time, and festivals must not be put in the position of having to choose one side or the other,” he added.
Toronto International Film Festival artistic director, Cameron Bailey
“We built TIFF Bell Lightbox to give our audience the best possible big screen experience. At the same time, our Festival selection is open to the best work we can find, whether or not it’s destined for theatres,” he said.
It should be noted that both Venice and TIFF have screened Netflix films in the past. The Lido was home to the debut of “Beasts Of No Nation,” while last year, TIFF debuted new episodes of the Netflix-produced “Black Mirror,” the horror “I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House,” and four original documentaries (“Amanda Knox,” “Into The Inferno,” “The Ivory Game,” and “The White Helmets“).
While film festivals do play an important in preserving the theatrical experience, as Barbera and Bailey note, where the average person finds and watches new movies has expanded far beyond the arthouse or multiplex. If cinema is going to survive, it will need to do so by both respecting the past, and being prepared for the future.