The next major film fes­ti­val is com­ing to your liv­ing room

As what would nor­mal­ly be film fes­ti­val sea­son has got­ten into full swing, cinephiles of all stripes have been sting­ing from the dearth of usu­al activity.

Those mak­ing the annu­al trip to cov­er these events on-site feel what­ev­er the work­ing ver­sion of home­sick­ness is, and those read­ing the cov­er­age from home miss the excite­ment of perus­ing an upcom­ing year in cin­e­ma all at once. It’s a minor com­plaint when thou­sands of infect­ed peo­ple across the globe have their health to wor­ry about, but to those who care, it’s still a bummer.

YouTube and Tribeca have part­nered to do some­thing about it, that some­thing being the new­ly announced We Are One: A Glob­al Film Fes­ti­val. Over the course of ten days, the online video-stream­ing plat­form will host an eclec­tic array of selec­tions orphaned by fes­ti­vals that have been can­celed and past fes­ti­val picks no with nowhere to go.

A line­up cher­ryp­icked from Cannes, the Berli­nale, BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, and over a dozen oth­er fes­ti­vals will appear on YouTube start­ing this Fri­day, free to stream. The select­ed films are light on A‑listers; one of the mar­quee titles is a doc­u­men­tary about street pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ricky Pow­ell, fea­tur­ing talk­ing-head com­men­tary from Natasha Lyonne and LL Cool J.

The pro­gram itself may not be so star-stud­ded – the pro­duc­ers behind most major projects con­tin­ue wait­ing until a return-on-invest­ment seems more viable – but it still includes a hand­ful of famous faces mak­ing guest appear­ances for live events.

Not unlike the real Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val, We Are One has assem­bled a stacked bench of tal­ent to hold court on their lives and works: Steven Soder­bergh will chop it up with Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Bong Joon-ho has been pen­ciled in for a chat with his long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Song Kang-ho, and Jack­ie Chan will deliv­er a solo address dur­ing which all lis­ten­ers will pre­sum­ably learn how to round­house kick an attacker.

There will also be a live DJ set from Roots front­man and Jim­my Fal­lon side­kick Quest­love, for those amenable to liv­ing room dance par­ties, and a short film strand with a new work by Bait direc­tor Mark Jenkin.

It may be a pale fac­sim­i­le of the real fes­ti­val expe­ri­ence, but that’s def­i­nite­ly prefer­able to no fac­sim­i­le at all, and it may be the most we can ask for under the cur­rent cir­cum­stances. Though the opti­mists among us might point out: no sun­burns, no three-hour queues, no secu­ri­ty check­points, no shutouts, no noisy gas­bags forc­ing you to over­hear their inane con­ver­sa­tions. Per­haps this isn’t such a bad way to take in a film fes­ti­val after all.

We Are One begins on 29 May and ends on 7 June. Check out the full sched­ule at weare​one​glob​alfes​ti​val​.com