Netflix snooty at Cannes and our sector clobbered

Netflix has managed to dump both Jane Campion and Andrew Dominik out in the cold as everyone else focuses on Cannes.

Cannes 2021 is a very loaded moment. The festival sticks obsessively and rightly to the idea that films should be seen in cinemas, and refused to go online for the 2020 screenings. That noble gesture wrecks a lot of releases, which were relying on the festival as a launchpad.

Six days ago, festival director Thierry Fremaux rewarded veteran journalist Eric Kohn with an email interview just before the list of official contenders was revealed. ‘Cannes supports cinema, and cinema requires theaters,’ he wrote. ‘We could have had a virtual festival, and we didn’t, because it would have trivialized the event. Cannes canceled in 2020. It was better to go down in history that way than with a few screenings on the internet to make people believe that we exist.’

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David Tiley was the Editor of Screenhub from 2005 until he became Content Lead for Film in 2021 with a special interest in policy. He is a writer in screen media with a long career in educational programs, documentary, and government funding, with a side order in script editing. He values curiosity, humour and objectivity in support of Australian visions and the art of storytelling.