Unionized workers at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, one of the largest and most respected genre-focused events on the global entertainment industry calendar, launched a 24-hour strike July 11, a week before the fest launches its 28th edition.Dominic Morrissette/Supplied
Unionized workers at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, one of the largest and most respected genre-focused events on the global entertainment industry calendar, launched a 24-hour strike Thursday, a week before the fest launches its 28th edition.
About 60 employees took turns walking a picket line outside the festival’s downtown Montreal offices to protest what they call Fantasia’s “stalling” of negotiations with the union.
“Fantasia wants to keep our freelance status for this year’s festival, even though we’ve been unionized since September, 2023,” Justine Smith, who sits on the negotiating committee of the Syndicat des employé-es de l’événementiel–CSN, said in a statement. “The employer’s lack of preparation for nearly a year is extremely disappointing.”
If Fantasia does not reach a tentative agreement with the union, whose members work in positions across the organization and who are asking for better pay and working conditions, further labour action could be taken to disrupt the launch of the festival, which runs from July 18 through Aug. 4 in venues across Montreal.
Founded in 1996 and recognized as an industry leader by such filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino and James Gunn, Fantasia regularly welcomes 100,000 guests to take in screenings of “anti-Hollywood” films in the horror, fantasy, sci-fi and action genres. This year’s edition will feature more than 125 features and 200 shorts, plus special tributes to director Mike Flanagan (Netflix’s Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher) and Canadian filmmaker Vincenzo Natali (Cube).
Reached for comment Thursday, Fantasia president and chief executive Pierre Corbeil said that negotiations will resume Friday afternoon, and that he is hopeful an agreement can be reached.
“The strike is unfortunate, but at the same time we understand that they want to put pressure on us. We feel that there is a will on both sides to arrive at an agreement tomorrow,” Corbeil said, adding that the two sides have been in negotiations since earlier this year.
The strike comes on the heels of similar labour disruption at this past spring’s Cannes Film Festival, where festival workers said changes to local legislation put freelancers in a financially precarious position.
“Like many workers in the cultural world, event industry employees want to join a union because they are demanding better working conditions, and stop being treated as mere freelancers, from whom more work can always be demanded for the same initial lump sum,” Annick Charette, president of the FNCC-CSN, one of the largest trade union federations in Quebec, said in a statement.