A collective of cinema workers has called a strike during the Cannes Film Festival, which starts on May 14.
A collective of cinema workers called this Monday, May 6 for a strike “of all employees of the Cannes Film Festival and parallel sections” aimed at “disrupting” them, one week before the opening of the largest event of the 7th art.
This call, which is extremely rare, does not call into question the opening or holding of the festival itself, a spokesperson for the “Sous les screens, la dèche” collective told AFP, and the objective is not not harm the films that will be presented, but a strike could “disrupt the event”. When questioned, the festival did not react immediately.
The opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival will be held on May 14, in the presence of the jury, chaired this year by Greta Gerwig.
Projectionists, programmers, press officers
Key professions such as projectionists, programmers, press officers, those responsible for ticketing or welcoming guests have voted to strike, she detailed.
Deploring the growing precariousness of their jobs, employed by different festivals during the year on temporary missions, they ask to be able to benefit from the status of intermittent workers in the entertainment industry, of which they are deprived.
They also denounce the latest unemployment insurance reforms taken by decree by the government, which have tightened the compensation rules, to the point that “the majority (of them) will have to give up” their job.
“No concrete proposal”
“Our alerts and demands have so far been received with polite kindness, but no concrete proposals have been put forward by the CNC (National Cinema Center, Editor’s note) or the Ministry of Culture,” they insist in a communicated.
The 77th Cannes Film Festival is due to be held on the Croisette from May 14 to 25, with around a hundred films, dozens of stars like Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Meryl Streep and Adam Driver, and tens of thousands of festival-goers.
Only one edition was compromised by a social movement: the 21st Cannes Film Festival had to be shortened, overtaken by the events of May 1968. With illustrious activists: Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Lelouch.
