In Cannes Film Festival tradition, a strike is threatening to disrupt the event just a week before it begins on May 14.
A group of freelance festival workers, known as the Sous les écrans la dèche (Broke Behind the Screens) are preparing to protest labour reforms that would cut their unemployment indemnities, a move that could potentially shake up festival logistics on every level.
The organisation that represents French film festival freelance workers including projectionists, drivers, press officers and other administrative staff at Cannes and other festivals in the country, wrote an open letter on Tuesday (May 7) announcing that their board had approved a move to strike due to what they call “the growing precariousness of the people working in film festivals.”
They officially called for “a strike of all employees of the Cannes Film Festival and of its sidebars.”
The group is contesting both what it calls inadequate pay that does not account for long hours and overtime, and the fact such freelancers do not benefit from France’s unique unemployment insurance programme for entertainment industry professionals and crews covering benefits when they are between jobs or projects. Instead, they are hired with short-term contracts.
Also looming is a government reform of unemployment benefits in France set to be enacted in July that would further cut their pay.
“These reforms are throwing festival workers in such precariousness that the majority of us will have to give up our jobs, thus jeopardising the events we take part in,” the group said in their open letter.
It is demanding the organisations employing them come to a collective agreement allowing them to be hired under the same conditions as other entertainment industry professionals and crews known as “les intermittants de spectacle” and that their unemployment benefits be retroactive to the last 18 months.
Festival response
Cannes Film Festival and its parallel sections Directors’ Fortnight, Critics’ Week and ACID said in a joint statement in response to the call for action they are “aware of the difficulties faced by some of their staff who, working on strings of contracts for film festivals, are affected by the reform of the French unemployment insurance scheme, and must grapple with a drop in their benefits.”
They said that they “hope that solutions will be found, and are prepared to set up lasting dialogue conditions to support them.”
The group said despite repeated appeals to authorities, their demands have gone unheard by the CNC and France’s Ministry of Culture so they have been forced to take action with the eyes of the world watching the high-profile event.
The festival and parallel sections added: “Aware of the sounding board that the Cannes Festival and its parallel selections represent, we understand the timeliness of these demands. But in order to undertake a constructive reflection aimed at reforming the status of these workers, all the festivals concerned, the institutions and the unions need to come together around the bargaining table. This is the work that must now be undertaken collectively.”
The Cannes Film Festival runs May 14-25.
Source: Cannes Film Festival calls for “solutions” after strike threat from freelance workers
