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France cancels Series Mania festival

TV festival cancelled after French govt. bans gatherings of more than 1,000 people.

French television festival Series Mania is the latest event to be cancelled due to fears surrounding COVID-19.

The French Government has banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people, prompting the event due to begin in Lille next week to be cancelled. Last week it had banned gatherings of more than 5,000 people in confined spaces.

Rachel Griffiths and producer Helen Bowden (Lambs of God, Upright, The Secrets She Keeps) were due to attend as jurors.

Rodolphe Belmer, president of Series Mania, said, “Every year since its inaugural event in Lille, Series Mania has attracted 80,000 festival-goers, most of whom have already booked their event tickets, and more than 3,000 professionals. Due to the recent restriction from the French government banning gatherings of more than 1,000 people, coupled with the travel restrictions for many of our international participants, we have made the difficult decision to cancel Series Mania.

“In this delicate period, we are very touched by the ongoing support of our French and international partners, and we want to express our warm thanks to everyone.”

At the time of writing France has 1784 confirmed cases of COVID-19 to date and has seen 33 deaths.

Titles due to premiere included British-New Zealand historical drama The Luminaries, HBO comedy Run, US sci fi Tales from the Loop, German drama Unorthodox, Israeli series Valley of Tears and Belgium fantasy drama Moloch plus screenings of Total Control, Josh Thomas comedy Everything’s Gonna be Okay, Foxtel dramas The End and Upright.

Series Mania has also been staged in Melbourne twice, in 2017 and 2018, but was held over in 2019 due to renovations at ACMI.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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