Cannes 2020: Cannes Lion pushes from June to October

The Cannes Lions festival has been postponed from June 22-26 to October 26-30 it was announced by festival organizers on Wednesday.

The decision was arrived at after consultation with public health officials, the Cannes mayoral office, French authorities and festival partners in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Speakers who were set to appear at the June festival included Kathleen Hall, corporate vice president of brand, advertising and research at Microsoft; Jean Tanis, global marketing creative lead at Netflix and Claudine Cheever, global head of branding and advertising at Amazon.

“The global situation is dynamic and changing rapidly, we felt it was critical to provide visibility on June as soon as possible. We will continue to liaise closely with our customers as we develop our plans,” said Philip Thomas, chair, Cannes Lions.

Simon Cook, managing director, Cannes Lions, went on to say: “Our community is facing unprecedented challenges and collaboration has never been more important. We are focused now on planning the festival – and our beating heart, the Lions – to ensure our community is able to recognize the extraordinary work it contributes to business, organizations and society.”

The announcement is a bit of a death knell for the main festival, whose fate has yet to be announced. A press conference is set for April 16 to announce if the 73rd edition of the Cannes Film Festival will go on in May as planned, be postponed or canceled altogether.

As of today, France currently under a 15-day lockdown in response to the pandemic. There have been 7,652 confirmed cases resulting in 148 deaths.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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