Spike Lee, the jury president for this year’s Cannes film festival, has welcomed artistic director Thierry Frémaux’s decision to postpone the festival from May until later in the summer.

“I agree 100% with Thierry and the Cannes film festival,” Lee told Variety. “The world has changed and it’s changing every day. People are dying and France’s president has said, several times: ‘We are at war.’

“The stuff that we love has to take a back seat: movies, TV, sports. So many things have been postponed and I agree with this move.”

The director, who is the festival’s first black jury presiden, added: “Everybody has to pray, get on bended knee, pray we get out of this, find a vaccine, get back on our feet – physically, emotionally and financially worldwide. This is no joke. It’s not some movie. People are dying.”

In the interview, Lee, 63, said he was spending time with his family in Brooklyn, New York City. “We’re doing whatever everybody else is trying to do – come together, love each other and just try to ride it out,” he said. “People are being laid off. People are being fired. People don’t know where their next cheque is going to come from, how they are going to see their children. When the schools close, who is going to take care of their children? This shit is crazy. This shit is bananas.”

A frequent critic of the current US president, Lee also took issue with Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis. “I wish he would stop saying: ‘The Chinese virus’. He’s putting Asian Americans in this country in danger. There’s nobody around him to say, ‘You can’t say this anymore’? That isn’t helping at all.”