The Cannes Festival, considered the most important in the world of cinema, could have a 77th edition, from May 14 to 25, “disturbed” by the call for a strike organized by a group of workers of the Seventh Art, who demand better conditions labor.
In a statement published this Monday, the collective “Sous les écrans, la dèche” (“Under the screens, misery”) launched a strike call for all people involved in the Cannes Festival and its parallel sections “due to the increase of precariousness” in the sector.
It is about protesting the tightening of the rules for access to unemployment benefits decreed by the Government of French President Emmanuel Macron, which, according to this group, leaves festival collaborators helpless, who before the reform could apply for unemployment without so many obstacles.
For this reason, they have asked that they be assimilated to the “intermittents of the show”, a unique job category that in France allows professionals from the world of the arts to be remunerated by the public treasury for the months in which they do not work, as long as they have fulfilled a minimum number of annual work hours.
“The opening of the Cannes Film Festival will have a bitter taste for us this time,” said the group, which with its strike plans to alter the normal operation but not suspend it.
“Sous les écrans, la dèche”, which was born in 2020, claims to have about 5,000 members. It represents several professional categories necessary for a festival of the magnitude of this event to function: projection operators, programmers, film subtitlers, box office employees and press managers, among others.
