Cannes Film Festival staff are among a collective of French cultural workers who have launched a fresh call to action over what they have described as their precarious and unfair working conditions.
In a statement shared today, and available to read in full below, advocacy group Sous Les Écrans La Dèche: Collectif Des Précaires Des Festivals De Cinéma (which translates to Under The Screens, The Waste: The Collective of Precarious Workers at Film Festivals), writes that their attempts to gain contractual rights like unemployment and retirement benefits have been “abruptly blocked.” The group is calling on all French workers to organize and demand action at next week’s Cannes Film Festival.
The group’s main objectives are the same as we reported ahead of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, during which they executed a series of small demonstrations. They want to be included in France’s unique unemployment insurance program for entertainment workers and technicians. Known as Intermittence de Spectacle, the scheme supports entertainment workers on short-term contracts with an unemployment benefit when they are between jobs or projects. The payments are funded through taxes paid by employers. Due to quirks in the regulations, many workers at French film festivals have long been excluded from the unemployment benefit. Instead, they are hired and handed flat short-term contracts. The collective is campaigning to be included in the scheme, citing the inherent seasonal nature of the work.
Following last year’s Cannes demonstrations and a year of organizing, France’s four major unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, and CFTC) and FICAM, which represents the management of France’s film festival, drafted a pact to finally include festival workers in the scheme. However, the unions failed to reach a final agreement with UNEDIC, the French government agency that regulates unemployment insurance.
“After a year of intense efforts, we are baffled and indignant,” the group writes in their call to action. “Many of us had eked out a meagre living all year, stretching thin salaries and compensation even thinner, hoping that the predicament was in the process of being solved.”
The letter continues: “Hundreds of us are waiting for the administrative process to be completed. Likewise, dozens of festivals are waiting to be able to offer employees who work for them only intermittently an appropriate job contract. This is a second call to action for all workers. If workers cannot earn a decent living from the jobs they do at festivals, how will the festivals keep going?”
Sous Les Écrans La Dèche includes 300 film festival workers from across France, including staff who work on the Cannes Official Selection, the festival’s Marché du Film, and parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.
The Sous les Écrans la Dèche movement has some high-profile supporters. French filmmaker Justine Triet wore the group’s bright red pin on her suit lapel as she walked the red carpet for Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall at Cannes in 2023. Payal Kapadia was wearing the same pin as she debuted All We Imagine As Light on the Croisette in 2024.
Reall the full Call To Action below:
One year ago, we mobilized to obtain better working conditions and, notably, to regain “intermittent employee” status for thousands of French film-festival workers. We wish we could announce that our voices had been heard. True, the first step towards organizing our branch has been taken. But the “intermittent employee” status that would entitle us to unemployment and retirement benefits remains out of reach
Last year, after the Cannes Film Festival, the Ministries of Culture and Labor and the CNC notified us that our demand for “intermittent employee” status had been denied. They said that we could obtain the right to this type of job contract only after we drafted an appropriate collective bargaining agreement and submitted it to the government.
An official was appointed to expedite matters. He mediated six months of negotiations between festival workers, trade unions, festival organizers, and government agencies.
The four major trade unions (the CFDT, CGT, FO, and CFTC) and the management of the festivals, represented by FICAM, applied themselves to drafting an amendment covering “Film and TV Festivals,” to be appended to the collective bargaining agreement existing for ESCE (Entreprises au Service de la Création et de l’Événement: Services Required for Staging Events and Shows).
After 6 months of talks, the amendment was signed in December of 2024 by all of the parties concerned. Management was represented by the FICAM, the SYNPASE, and LEVENEMENT; labor, by the following unions: F3C, CFDT, CGT Spectacle, SPIAC – CGT, SNRT- CGT Audiovisuel, and SNAJ – CFTC.
The goals sought by all the parties were to define and structure the film and TV festival sector, and to establish job definitions and pay scales. These specifications would make it possible not only to regulate periods of employment, but also, and especially, to set up unemployment compensation for temporary or “intermittent” festival workers.
A list of the job titles eligible for intermittent status had to be defined. These titles would then be integrated into List 4 of services required for the staging of creations and events (Prestation au service de la création et de l’événement), part of Appendix 8 of French unemployment insurance legislation. Our livelihoods, endangered by 2021 unemployment insurance reforms, would no longer be so precarious.
On April 5, 2025, the General Labor Authority approved the branch agreement, with a publication in the Journal Officiel legislative record. Throughout the process, we had been assured by unions, management organizations, and government representatives that modifying the list of job titles would merely be an administrative formality. On May 1st, the amendment was therefore extended to all film and TV festivals.
At this point, only one hurdle remained. Film and TV festival workers would regain their “intermittent worker” rights as soon as List 4 of Appendix 8 of the unemployment insurance laws was updated.
On April 23, the list of trades was submitted to the UNEDIC, the French government agency that regulates unemployment insurance. However, at this meeting, the parties involved failed to reach an agreement. As a result, festival workers’ access to intermittent status was abruptly blocked for the foreseeable future.
After a year of intense efforts, we are baffled and indignant. Many of us had eked out a meagre living all year, stretching thin salaries and compensation even thinner, hoping that the predicament was in the process of being solved.
Hundreds of us are waiting for the administrative process to be completed. Likewise, dozens of festivals are waiting to be able to offer employees who work for them only intermittently an appropriate job contract.
This is a second call to action for all workers. If workers cannot earn a decent living from the jobs they do at festivals, how will the festivals keep going?
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