Against all odds, the Monte-Carlo Comedy Film Festival will take place in Monaco from Tuesday 6 October to Saturday 10 October at the Grimaldi Forum, with a clear message: The show must go on.
Covid remains the talk of the town. “We’ve now reached the 17th edition of the Monte-Carlo Comedy Film Festival, and I must say, it wasn’t an easy ride,” joked Festival President Ezio Greggio at the Festival’s press conference. The Monte-Carlo Comedy Film Festival, first organised for April, was moved to July, and then postponed again to October.
One phrase keeps coming back as if it were a matter of life and death, which it is. “The show must go on,” says Mr. Greggio, “That is the message that we want to transmit. The show must go on.”
A pink jury, short films and the mob
The pink jury, Mr. Greggio insists, was a coincidence. “We never planned on having an almost all-female panel. But I called Sabrina Impacciatore, Maggie Civantos and Lotte Verbeek, and here we are,” he says. Joining them is jury president Nick Vallelonga, who won two Oscars for Green Book.
Coronavirus never fully leaves the conversation. Mr. Vallelonga, who is currently working on The Many Saints of Newark, a film adaptation of the Sopranos, says that they test actors and crew on set “every other day”. While Sabrina Impacciatore stresses: “Cinema is what allowed us to overcome this collective trauma. Society should now understand how fundamental the creative arts are to the world.”
All film screenings will take place at the Grimaldi Forum. Particularly awaited is the international premiere of George Gallo’s The Comeback Trail, a film about two movie producers who, owing money to the mob, decide to produce a badly-written Western to scam its aging move star. The comedy stars Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, Zach Braff e Kate Katzman.
The Monte-Carlo Comedy Film Festival is one of the leading comedy film festivals in the world. This year, to keep up with demand the Festival has also introduced a short-film competition.
Monte-Carlo Comedy Film Festival
5-10 October 2020, Grimaldi Forum