Deprived of festival-goers, its main fauna at this time of the year, the Cannes Croisette received, on Sunday, the visit of an improbable starlet, a young wild boar weighing fifty kilos, the municipal police noted.
Spotted by a night patrol around 1:50 am, the solitary animal took advantage of the confinement, strolling quietly on a totally deserted Croisette, visibly not shy at the idea of being filmed, told AFP, Yves Daros, the director of the municipal police.
No Cannes Film Festival this year, but a boar that roamed the Croisette this weekend as in a film by Bela Tarr. pic.twitter.com/FHIOjf2X2K
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"This is the first time I have seen one on the Croisette"
"Our objective, even if the city is deserted at night at the moment due to the curfew, was to prevent the boar from causing an accident, and also to harm itself" said the policeman. The patrol therefore patiently followed the beast which wandered all along the Croisette, offering itself a part of window shopping on the side of luxury shops near the Palais des Festivals.
Escorted closely by a police car, the animal finally turned back and returned, after a last detour by the famous establishment of Palm Beach, to Pointe Croisette, the forest massif located on the hill of California, from where he was probably down.
"In police memory, this is the first time that I have seen one on the Croisette", laughs Yves Daros, noting that wild boars are also present in another massif in the city, at La Croix-des - Guards.
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Festival postponed sine die
Confined since March 17, like all of France, Covid-19 obliges, the city of Cannes is more used, at this time of the year, to welcome the industry and the movie stars for its annual Festival. But the 73rd edition of this meeting, which was to start Tuesday and run until May 23, was finally postponed by the organizers, initially at the end of June-early July, then sine die, this date also being impossible.
Since then, the organization of the Festival indicated "to study all the opportunities allowing to accompany the cinema year by making the films of Cannes 2020 exist in one way or another".
The official selection of the films in competition, before a jury which was to be chaired by the American director Spike Lee, should have been announced on April 16.