71st Berlin Film Festival Going To Be Held Virtually In 2021
Film Industry Wants the Berlinale to Be Conducted In the First Quarter of the Upcoming Year
The 71st Berlin Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale, has been scheduled to be conducted as a virtual event in the year 2021 in Germany, which was previously expected to be conducted in-person in the month of February.
The new wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the colder months has triggered the viral infection to spread rapidly as people tend to spend most of their time indoors due to chilly winds and snowfall in certain areas across the world.
Due to the new restrictive measures for the COVID-19 lockdown, major scheduling changes have been made in the 71st Berlin Film Festival 2020, shifting the entire occasion to be conducted as a virtual online event.
The original dates for the 71st Berlin Film Festival were previously set to be conducted from February 11 to February 21, but the new arrangement has pushed back the dates for the 71st episode of the noteworthy annual occasion.
Online virtual event for the 71st Berlin Film Festival
In the past recent few weeks, the active confirmed cases of the coronavirus pandemic have drastically increased across the entire country of Germany due to the fresh wave of the COVID-19 viral pathogen, further triggered by cold and flu caused by the daily cold surrounding temperature.
There has been speculation that due to the rapid surge of the local transmission of viral infection across the city, the capital city of Berlin might possibly be forced to go virtual, including the 71st Berlin Film Festival. These changes would be put into effect until the drastic situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic is controlled by the mass consumption of a viable working vaccine.
On Wednesday, the entire nation of Germany has been put into strict lockdown to limit and prevent local transmission of coronavirus infection, including shifting of the 71st Berlin Film Festival to a virtual event.
All educational institutes, along with non-essential businesses and shops, have been forced to shut down, which would help in reducing the active cases of COVID-19, and putting into effect the social distancing protocol that helps in the prevention of the spread of infection.
Virtual shifting for European Film Market
It has been reported that the 71st Berlin Film Festival dates have now been shifted to the early weeks of the month of March and would only be conducted as a completely virtual online-based event. Another entertainment industry, major event of the European Film Market, which is usually conducted parallel with the Berlinale, will also follow suit with this year’s 71st Berlin Film Festival.
The plans for the series of proceedings for the European Film Market has already been made public, which includes online screening along with their market events has been incorporated in their 2021 edition. There are hopes that if the coronavirus pandemic situation gradually improves till the dates of the event, then some sort of in-person physical activity would also be conducted, but it seems highly unlikely.
In the place of a regular physical festival, Germany is looking forward to screening the 71st Berlin Film Festival’s section of the main competition in an online event while holding a separate small scale festival in-person with on-site premieres in Berlin in the upcoming summer season. The model for the entire 71st Berlin Film Festival has been developed like the three-day Cannes Film Festival conducted this year in the month of October in France, just as the country was entering its second phase of nationwide lockdown restrictions.
Scheduling changes amid the second lockdown in Germany
The organizing body for the 71st Berlin Film Festival was actually hoping to conduct an entire in-person physical event instead of the virtual arrangement for the event, even if the festival was to be pushed to April.
But as most of the event’s funding is done by the government of the Festival, which is not willing to hold a physical event amid the increasing active cases of the coronavirus infection throughout the region. Due to which the scheduling and conducting changes for the 71st Berlin Film Festival have been made to cooperate with the second nationwide lockdown across Germany.
If the 71st Berlin Film Festival were to be conducted in April, it would affect other major industry events, including the annual Cannes Film Festival that has now been scheduled in May to accommodate the international visitors. But the Cannes event could possibly be further postponed in case of unfavorable restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
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