“What Am I Doing Here?” Film Festivals, Awards Shows, and Stars During the COVID-19 Emergency

Weaving together celebrity studies and film festival studies, the essay underscores how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the stars’ presence, mode of appearance, and employment within the rituals of film festivals and awards ceremonies. It also touches upon the way COVID-19 has impacted the relationship between film stars and their public within such events and how this relationship has been rethought also through the exploitation of Internet technologies. To this end, the essay benefits from interviews conducted with the artistic directors of the main Italian film festivals and awards ceremonies as well as with film stars that have attended such events under these unprecedented circumstances. More precisely, after providing a general outline of the changes that occurred within Italian film festivals and awards ceremonies during 2020 and how they have impacted the self-promotion of film stars, the essay focuses on two key events of the Italian awards and festival season: the David di Donatello awards ceremony and the Venice Film Festival