With its scheduled September staging coming closer and closer, the Venice Film Festival has now released the changes it has put in place to adapt to the new situation put in place by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Quoting the Venice Film Festival’s organizers, The Hollywood Reporter says the 77th edition of the film festival will now feature a lower number of films in the Official Selection, as well as scrap the Sconfini section for the meantime. The Sconfini section often features cross-media productions, television series, experimental works, genre films, and arthouse films.

Another change being introduced is the move of the Venice Classics section to Aug. 25-31 as part of the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival. The festival focuses on restored films and will be held in Bologna, Italy.

The reduction of participating films, the temporary discarding of the Sconfini section, and the move of the Venice Classics section is meant to make it easier for the festival organizers to enforce social distancing. 

Deadline also reports that aside from screening the films in the theaters in the Lido but with social distancing measures in place, organizers will also set up two outdoor arenas that will be located in the skating rink on the Lido and in the Giardini della Biennale. Other screening venues will be at the Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre and the Cinema Rossini in Venice.

According to Alberto Barbera, the Venice Film Festival’s Artistic Director, the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival will celebrate the future reopenings after the pandemic as well as pay tribute to the victims and have a message of optimism for the world of cinema.

When the Venice Film Festival first announced that it would push through with its September dates, organizers also outlined the protocols they would have in place to prevent the festival from becoming a coronavirus infection hotspot. Aside from running simulations, organizers also revealed that digital technology would be utilized to help foreign press with regards to coverage.

At one point during the pandemic, Italy was the epicenter of it in Europe. Currently, there are more than 200,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, with deaths at 34,899 people.

Globally, the July 7 situation report from the World Health Organization puts the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at 11,500,302 people. Deaths caused by COVID-19 worldwide is at 535,759 people.

In the same situation report, the European region logs a total number of 2,809,848 confirmed COVID-19 cases. There are now 200,651 people that have died from COVID-19 in Europe.