Strike at Fantasia Film Fest causes disruption to seasonal workers’ wages

The Fantasia Film Festival is facing union strikes as the 24th edition of North America’s largest genre festival is set to open on July 18 with a world premiere of Elijah Wood’s Bookworm and later an international premiere for The Count of Monte Cristo.

The Fantasia union, affiliated to the Syndicat des employé-es de l’événementiel-CSN, signed its first collective agreement in September 2023, shortly after the 2023 edition of the film festival. But efforts to set a minimum wage for around 60 unionized Fantasia employees have not yet reached an agreement at the negotiating table.

As a result, organizers of the Syndicat des employé-es de l’événementiel–CSN staged a 24-hour strike outside Fantasia’s headquarters in Maisonneuve West in Montreal on July 11, and are threatening additional pickets for the coming week.

The three-week genre festival will open with a world premiere for Bookwormthe film by New Zealand filmmaker Ant Timpson, starring Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher. There are also international premieres for Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s Cannes title The Count of Monte Cristoand Matthew Fifers hazestarring David Pittu and Brian J. Smith.

Thierry Lariviere, a spokesman for the Syndicat des employé-es de l’événementiel–CSN, said The Hollywood Reporter The genre film festival wants to continue paying its staff a flat rate for working on Fantasia 2024, regardless of how many hours they work. Lariviere added that Fantasia has agreed to some changes, but only for the 2025 edition next year.

This leaves the film festival at an impasse, as negotiations resumed on July 12 and an additional day is planned for July 15. The organizers of the Fantasia Film Festival could not be reached for comment on Friday.

The Montreal Film Festival, like other independent film festivals, hires staff on short-term seasonal contracts. “Staff are no longer freelance and the law requires that every hour worked above the minimum wage of 15.75 Canadian dollars (11.55 US dollars) must be paid. Workers want a raise and to be paid for every hour,” Larivière stressed.

In the run-up to the next edition of Fantasia, which is scheduled to run from July 18 to August 4, union members overwhelmingly voted in favor of a total of five days of strikes to push their demands at the negotiating table.

“Like many other workers in the cultural sector, event workers want to join a union because they demand better working conditions. They want to be recognized as full employees and to be paid for all the hours they work, just like everyone else who has to pay rent and buy groceries. And they no longer want to be treated like mere freelancers who can be asked to do more and more work for the same flat rate,” added Annick Charette, president of the FNCC-CSN union, in a statement.