Lyon (AFP)

A showcase for classics rebroadcast on the big screen, a meeting of big names in cinema, and this year, a window on a private Cannes selection of Croisette by the coronavirus: the Lumière festival opened on Saturday in Lyon.

"The death of cinema, we do not believe it at all, and we are full" to think so, declared Thierry Frémaux, director of the Lumière Institute of Lyon and general delegate of the Cannes festival, at the opening of the festival he pilots.

"We must prepare the world after, (in which) there will be cinema, we are all convinced of it", he added, in front of his guests, including personalities of the 7th art such as directors Toni Gatlif, Ladj Li, Oliver Stone, or Jacques Audiard.

This year the festival pays tribute to Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, double winners of the Palme d'Or, by awarding them the 12th Prix Lumière.

For a week, it will also celebrate French dialogue writer and screenwriter Michel Audiard - who would have turned 100 this year - with a retrospective of his films in restored copies.

In this year turned upside down by the health crisis, the great peculiarity of Lumière is an exceptional window offered to the "Official Cannes 2020 Selection".

The most prestigious of international festivals could not be held on the Croisette, but 56 films received this distinction.

Twenty-three of them are offered a remedial session in Lyon, where they will be screened in the presence of their teams, as well as part of "Cannes Classics", dedicated to film classics.

These films range from "Aya and the Witch", the latest cartoon by Gorô Miyazaki, the son of the founder of the Japanese studios Ghibli, to "Drunk", a social satire on the place of alcohol by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg ("Festen" ) or "Falling", a family drama about a father and his son which marks the passage to the direction of the American-Danish actor Viggo Mortensen.

The public will also be able to meet Oliver Stone, director of films like "Platoon" and "Wall Street", who traces the beginnings of his legendary career in his memoir, "In search of the light".

The Lyon festival, chaired by director Bertrand Tavernier, was launched in 2009 by the Institut Lumière.

Presented as the largest festival in the world devoted to classic films, with 200,000 spectators during its last edition, its Prize has dedicated the careers of big names such as Clint Eastwood, Jane Fonda, Wong Kar-wai and Catherine Deneuve.

© 2020 AFP