“I don’t understand this obsession with American movies. My friend [Venice director Alberto] Barbera didn’t have Kore-Eda’s film, nor Korean, Egyptian or Lebanese movies in Competition. I think a festival must show the cinema of the whole world,” explained Fremaux.” Still we had Spike Lee and John Cameron Mitchell’s film. Venice plays its game and they’re right to screen Netflix movies if Cannes doesn’t take them, they’re also right to play the Oscar card because the press is more obsessed with one night in March than with the six months from July to October.” Fremaux is clearly shooting darts at Venice, he’s not happy about the Netflix debacle but, at the same time, maintaining the quality at this year’s Cannes was top-notch and I tend to agree with him on that. “Burning,” “Cold War,” “Dogman,” “BlackKklansman” and “Happy as Lazzaro” are world-class. Venice had “Roma,” (which was supposed to be at Cannes) “The Favourite” and stuff like “Non-Fiction,” “A Star is Born,” “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” and “First Man,” which don’t come close to the Cannes movies I mentioned. Some of the latter films went to TIFF and Telluride.  At the end of the day, except for Orson Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind,” and “Roma,” Fremaux made the right decision by not selecting “Peterloo,” “The Sisters Brothers,” “Suspiria,” “Sunset,”  “The Death and Life of John F Donovan,” “Maya,” “Kursk,” and “Loro,” all of these lower-level movies went to Venice and TIFF instead.  Closed-door meetings are currently happening between Fremaux and Netflix to make a deal for next year’s edition to have the streaming giant’s films screening. “I am neither pro or against Netflix,” he said. “My job is to show the state of cinema in a time in which Martin Scorsese is about to release a movie produced by Netflix. In 2017 the board of the festival asked me not to accept any more movies that won’t screen in theaters. This isn’t strange if you think that exhibitors are in that board. And they are right to be preoccupied by this trend.” He continued, “I would like to screen every movie I like. I couldn’t invite some of these in 2018 [because of the Netflix ban], we’ll see about 2019. You need to wait for the next episode.” From the very beginning of this Netflix/Cannes debate I have been saying that Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” could be a deal-breaker if any deal is struck.

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