The Central and Eastern Europe's leading cinema event, Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, has cancelled this year's edition due to COVID-19 pandemic.
It will instead offer a selection of movies from its line up in theatres across the Czech Republic, as the country prepares to open up cinemas again. It will stage its industry program online.
According to Variety, the president of the festival, Jiri Bartoska said, "We strongly believe that seeing a movie with other people in a theatre is a powerful and irreplaceable experience. And because of the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival is one of the most important cultural events in the Czech Republic, we have decided that holding an alternative version would go against the festival's main mission: to bring together audiences, filmmakers, and people from different walks of life in order to collectively enjoy works of cinema."
The festival's programming department chose "a variety of intriguing films they knew would be popular with festival audiences," during preparations for the edition, the festival said.
As the Czech government's plan for loosening the lockdown on June 8 that will allow cinemas to screen movies to 50 viewers, the festival has decided to orgse a special version of its traditional "KVIFF at Your Cinema" program, in which the best of the festival tours cities around the country.
Now moviegoers nationwide will get a chance to see the festival's selection of films over the nine days originally planned for the festival, July 3-11.
The virtual version will also be presented by the festival industry program on July 6-8, KVIFF Eastern Promises.
Film projects in various stages of development and production from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa will be presented to sales compes, international buyers, and festival programmers.
Also, the festival has joined the YouTube project 'We Are One: A Global Film Festival.' The 55th edition of the festival will take place on July 2-10, 2021.
( With inputs from ANI )