MONTREAL — The organizers of the Fantasia Film Festival, which wrapped up its 12th edition July 21, say their event may die without government help.

‘We are doing really well. We are performing, but the amount we get is very small when compared to other film festivals,’ Pierre Corbeil, one of the event’s founders, tells Playback Daily. ‘We had 70 invited guests this year and screened 100 feature films. All that costs money.’

Fantasia, which bills itself as North America’s premiere genre fest, has a budget of roughly $1 million and receives a combined amount of around $100,000 from the City of Montreal, SODEC and Quebec’s ministries of tourism and municipal affairs.

Corbeil was responding to the Quebec government’s announcement this week that it was pumping $720,000 into the 32nd edition of Montreal’s World Film Festival, which starts tomorrow.

He wants those agencies and government departments that fund film festivals to undertake an objective comparative analysis of Montreal’s various festivals. He maintains that Fantasia, which ran from July 3-21 and drew around 77,000 this year, needs the kind of support allocated to the WFF and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.

Fantasia launched in 1996, screening films from Hong Kong and Japan. Today, it screens fantasy films from around the world, and has attracted big-name sponsors such as video-game maker Ubisoft, Seville Films and Sympatico.

‘It’s starting to become clear that we are gradually losing our status as a city of cultural festivals to Toronto. Our festival’s predicament is a perfect illustration of the lack of vision of our political decision-makers,’ says Corbeil.

‘We aren’t going to be able to continue it if we don’t get some more money.’