The 2021 edition of the Angoulême International Comics Festival is canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizers announced on Friday.
An exceptional outdoor edition for the general public was to be organized next June.
The next edition is scheduled from January 27 to 30, 2022.
The 2021 edition of the International Comics Festival in Angoulême is canceled due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the organizers announced on Friday.
This Festival, which is traditionally held at the end of January, and which had awarded its prizes behind closed doors at that time, gave up an exceptional open-air general public edition at the end of June 2021, the management explained in a press release.
"In view of the evolution of the current health context, to organize an edition of the Festival next June - as it had been envisaged last November - would have meant giving up many dimensions which are the basis of the identity and the raison d'être of the 'event since its inception, "she said.
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The Grand Prix will be awarded in June
Consequently, "the organization of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, in conjunction with the FIBD Association, and after consultation with its partners, has decided to meet all of you at the end of January 2022" , she added.
The 49th edition is scheduled from January 27 to 30.
One award was missing among those awarded at the end of January, the most prestigious, the Grand Prix, which rewards the entire work of an author.
This 2021 Grand Prix will indeed be awarded at the end of June, as initially planned, in a form that has not been communicated.
The 2020 Grand Prix was awarded to Emmanuel Guibert.
An exhibition at the Angoulême Museum devoted to his work, which was normally due to open on January 30, is waiting to be able to do so as soon as it is authorized.
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The current rules allow summer festivals to be held but in drastic sanitary conditions: 5,000 people maximum, seated and distanced.
The organizers of the Eurockéennes de Belfort, who also announced on Friday the cancellation of the 2021 edition of the rock festival, denounced in a press release a "straitjacket" according to them "incompatible with the state of mind of a living and stirring event ".