The collective of cinema workers, Sous les screens, la dèche, called on Monday 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 biggest event in the 7th art.
In a press release published on the collective website, the members regret the vagueness surrounding their status: “We alternate short-term missions with periods of non-work and despite the intermittent nature of our jobs and while we work on the distribution of cinematographic works, our activities do not fall under the regime of the intermittency of the show! “.
They are asking for a reclassification of their contract to be able to access intermittent status: “We demand that the structures which employ us be affiliated to a suitable collective agreement allowing us to be hired under the intermittent regime, and that our professions be integrated into Annex 8 of the unemployment insurance regulations, “which applies to workers and technicians hired by cinema employers”, with eighteen months of retroactivity”.
The collective Under the screens, la dèche has been campaigning for more than a year to highlight the precariousness of cinema professions. During the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, Justine Triet and the team of the film “Anatomy of a Fall” walked the red carpet with a badge in support of these demands.
This call, extremely rare, does not call into question the opening or holding of the festival itself, a spokesperson for the collective “Under the screens, la dèche” 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.
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.