Here are some photos of Susan Sarandon at the Magna Graecia Film Festival in Catanzaro, Italy. This is film festival season, with the Venice Film Festival starting this week, followed by film festivals in Deauville and Toronto and other cities. The reason why we haven’t covered Venice this week is because there are basically no significant red carpet premieres, because SAG-AFTRA is on strike and actors are strictly prohibited from attending premieres or promoting their work in any way. So what the f–k was Susan Sarandon doing at this film festival? Per Variety, these are the strike rules:

Film and television productions will shut down, but the work stoppage has reverberations that extend beyond actors going to set. According to the guidelines, SAG-AFTRA members will not be able to attend premieres, do interviews for completed work, go to awards shows, attend film festivals or even promote projects on social media while the strike is in effect. They are also not allowed to attend conventions such as Comic-Con to promote any past or present work made under a SAG-AFTRA contract.

[From Variety]

Sarandon has already appeared at some of the SAG-AFTRA picket lines in New York. Then she hopped on a plane and attended a film festival? I’ve been trying to look into this to figure out exactly why the f–k she was there and if it’s in a blatant violation of strike rules. There isn’t a lot of coverage to base this on, but the Daily Mail did say that she was picking up the “Golden Column for Lifetime Achievement” at a festival which “works to promote auteur cinema and young Italian and international cinema.” I suspect that Sarandon sees “collecting a lifetime achievement award” as not a violation of strike rules and not specific promotion for struck work. I don’t know if she’s technically correct, especially when the better rule of thumb is simply “don’t attend any film festivals during the strike.” There’s a reason why striking actors are avoiding ALL promotion and ALL film festivals during the strike.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.