Christopher Vourlias With days to spare before the opening night of this year’s Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival, organizers were suddenly forced to contend with a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases in Greece’s second city, prompting them to scrap plans for a hybrid edition and move entirely online.The sudden reversal, said festival director Orestis Andreadakis, was “really, really difficult,” but not entirely unforeseen, as the country grapples with a second wave of COVID-19 that has far outpaced the first wave in the spring.
Contingency plans were already in place, as Andreadakis and his colleagues spent months preparing for a variety of scenarios. “It was extremely difficult, because it was as if [we were] preparing three festivals” at.
Read more on variety.com