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"Every time one starts a project, whether it's in a pandemic or not, it always feels like the first day of school,” Cate Blanchett, 51, declared at last week's Venice Film Festival press conference. Urging her audience and industry members to be courageous despite their pandemic fears, the surgical-mask-wearing Blanchett arrived at the Lido to head this year's jury at the festival, Europe's oldest and one of the “Big Five,” along with Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Toronto.
International film festivals have long been out of the reach of the average American moviegoer. And yet, while this streaming era has been challenging for those for whom dinner and a movie has been central to their weekly routine, there is a silver lining. For AARP's avid movie watchers, the collateral benefit is that many domestic festivals have responded to the pandemic by migrating large parts of their programs online for the very first time. Home viewers have new access to elite and far-flung film festivals from their television consoles. Movie lovers from Poughkeepsie to Tulsa to Tempe can now access, for the price of admission, links to film offerings that might not have made it to their local cineplexes or art houses until deep into the fall prestige film season, if ever.
Here's how to connect to five fantastic fall festivals in the U.S.:
New York Film Festival (Sept. 25 to Oct. 11)
Now in its 58th season, and boasting a vividly colored, irony-drenched film poster by the legendary John Waters, 74, the prestigious Gotham-based event has taken the lead in streamlining programming and migrating much of its content online for this social distancing era.
Highlights: Frances McDormand, 63, makes another play for Oscar in Nomadland, written and directed by Chloe Zhao (The Rider), while Michelle Pfeiffer, 62, returns to the screen to close the festival with French Exit. Both are American premieres that won't open theatrically until December and early 2021.
Online HQ: The New York Film Festival
How to fest: General public tickets for virtual screenings are on sale. For a set fee, festival film links will be available to those in the United States and its territories for a specific time window. There's even a detailed support page with FAQs and an email help line.
