The Angoulême International Comics Festival will not take place as planned from January 27 to 30. Taking note of the new health measures in the middle of the fifth wave of Covid-19 – in particular the return of indoor gauges – the Director General of the FIBD, Franck Bondoux, announced to Release that the event, almost ready, would be postponed, probably for three months.
The festival is currently in discussions with all the actors involved to agree on a new date, perhaps at the end of March, “In a valley of contamination rather than in full peak like today”.
But there is something more serious than this postponement. Given the progress of the festival and the sums committed when deciding on a postponement, the future of the FIBD is threatened if the state does not help the event, insists Franck Bondoux.
The Angoulême Festival is emerging from a dark year, which saw the January 2021 edition postponed to the summer of 2021, before this summer event was in turn canceled. “Without emergency state aid, the future of the Angoulême festival is threatened”, considers its president.
The festival is traditionally held at the end of January. Last year, in the midst of a health storm, the International Comics Festival reduced its traditional January edition to its simplest expression, a ceremony intended to reward the best books published in 2020 and an exhibition dedicated to Emmanuel Guibert, such as customary after an author has received the grand prize the previous year. The rest of the festivities were postponed to a summer event which ultimately never took place. The only survivor of this missed event, the award ceremony of the Grand Prix of the city of Angoulême, with which the authors reward the best of them for all of their work.