The secret, as almost always, is in turning necessity into virtue. Or the obligation in duty, or the norm in morals. Since Kant announced, ascetic and thorough as he was, that virtue is its own reward, all the advantages, utilitarians and pragmatists were left without arguments. Does an internet film festival make sense? Perhaps the first impulse, because of the evidence, is to respond negatively. Where is the meeting between the public and the author? Where the debate and criticism? Where the applause and the vituperation? After all, the meaning of a festival is none other than that of questioning and doubt. But, we return to the question, and if there was no other choice, does it make sense to give up the festival in the absence of movie theaters?

And here, the peculiar and always restless Festival D'A did not think twice. Better the good than the best. Starting today and until May 10, the contest led by Carlos R. Ríos officially becomes the first to go, thanks to the Filmin platform , from the physical to the chemical, from the real to the virtual, from analog to digital. "Of course," says the person in charge, "that in D'A's DNA is the movie theater. And obviously with directors and debates. But since this was not possible, we wanted to give the opportunity for the films to be seen. Not all they can wait four or five months. "

And so it is, while the great festivals from Cannes to Venice passing through Tribeca (the driving force behind the idea) and San Sebastián join forces to announce a strange consolation prize called 'We Are One: A Global Film Festival' which will You can see on YouTube from May 29 to June 7 and that basically recycles the past, D'A does what others do not dare. In total there are 47 feature films and 20 shorts. Not exactly all the ones that were there, but almost. "Due to distribution commitments and strategies, there have been resignations. But there is 70% of what was promised and contracted for the movie theater," Ríos confesses.

A picture of 'Aznavour by Charles'.

In effect, the program highlights names such as the German Werner Herzog , the French Arnaud Desplechin and Christophe Honoré , the Japanese Kiyoshi Kurosawa , the Chinese Lou Ye , the Argentine Paula Hernández and the Austrian Jessica Hausner , which offers a retrospective with ' Little Joe' , his latest and haunting job available starting May 3 for 48 hours, in the lead. All of them are habitual of the great appointments and, in fact, three of the mentioned ones present a film coming directly from Cannes. "If what we are experiencing can be of any use, it is that, suddenly, the public has had time to approach another type of cinema. Perhaps it is time to stop consuming what a platform's algorithm says and really dare to trying other narratives, other ways, different ways of looking at the world and the cinema, "says Ríos convinced of his work, suddenly and because of the coronavirus, almost messianic.

Outside of established names, the festival invites each viewer to fulfill their own exploration. And there appear slightly more corner proposals, but already supported by curiosity and recognition by critics, the curious. 'Los lobos' , by the Mexican Samuel Kishi Leopo , or 'Ghost tropic' , by the Belgian Bas Devos , both place us in front of each of the contradictions and inequalities in the world that inhabits us. It is social cinema, but with a gaze as deep as it is poetic. At his side, and to cite the opposite pole, the proposals of Matthew Rankin in 'The twentieth century' and Valentyn Vasyanovych in 'Atlantis' place us before the cinema as the scene of dreams, nightmares, dystopias and the most irrepressible nonsense . All four tapes belong to the Transicions section , but you can still dive deeper into Talents . And there two drops of genius: 'Abou Leila' , by Amin Sidi-Boumédine, a hypnotic delusion that has landed here since the Critics' Week in Cannes, and 'Dwelling in the Fuchun mountains', by Bu Xiaogang, a huge fresco by the most intimate feelings.

And one more, by peculiar and with the stamp of "especially recommended" by the director. 'Aznavour by Charles' is a documentary by Marc Di Domenico where the artist, actor and champion of the ' chanson ' tells himself. The film pastes, reconstructs and gives meaning to a huge unpublished material from Charles Aznavour's own home cinema tapes . It is a portrait that is also a self-portrait. It is a documentary that ends up being pure myth, perfect fabulation.

"We will have to live through a crisis and a post-crisis. When all this is over, many things will have to be reconsidered: the way of releasing the movies and even the way of seeing cinema", says the director and continues: "This was our tenth anniversary. We have decided to postpone the celebrations for next year: it will be the tenth bis, but it is clear that what we do now when programming ' online ' is not just a parenthesis. Many things will have to rethink. " And there, in doubt, is the last sentence and the entire festival, which, ultimately, is what it was about.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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