It’s starting to look like the Cannes Film Festival could see yet another delay as Dutch director Paul Verhoeven suggested last week on a radio interview with NPO Radio 1 (in Dutch) that the event could be delayed to sometime in October. Verhoeven had expected to debut his latest film “Benedetta” at Cannes in July but seems to be under the impression that it will move into the fall.
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“But there also seems to be a fallback date to October. So when that film will finally see the light after two years, the question is,” the filmmaker told Radio 1 earlier this month. How long can you postpone the interviewer asks about the festival? “Not that long. Because then the movies pile up,” he replied.
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Verhoeven’s latest project treading similar themes and tones that he’s tackled in the past sees Belgian actress Virginie Efira playing Benedetta Carlini, a novice nun in the 17th century who joins an Italian convent and begins a love affair with another woman. It’s based on the novel “Immodest Acts – The Life of A Lesbian Nun In Renaissance Italy” by Judith C. Brown with a script from David Burke.
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The director notes that even though they wrote and shot the film before the pandemic, it sort of oddly covers similar ground stating. “When we were shooting the film, there lived still no [Corornavirus] to be seen. It’s about the outbreak of the plague in a town in Italy and so happens to be very prophetic”, Verhoeven said.
Cannes Organizers have already delayed the festival once, from May to July. Whether they delay to the fall? Surely that announcement, if it comes, won’t arrive until much later in the year.