As the fall festival season gets underway, Playback is looking at some of the concerns and hopes of indie sector stakeholders. Part one below examines the potential impact the dual U.S. strikes will have on the market. Read part two to see how the Canadian industry is finding opportunities in a disrupted film landscape.

A Hollywood-sized shadow has been cast over the fall film market as distributors and sales agents in Canada mull the challenges– and opportunities — ahead.

Dual strikes from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) have put U.S. production, including service work in Canada, in a standstill with development on pause and actors unable to film or promote their projects in interviews, on red carpets or at film festivals.

The immediate impact on film studios has led to a shift in windowing strategies. Sony Pictures postponed the release date for Kraven the Hunter by nearly a year, moving from Oct. 6 to Aug. 30, 2024, and Warner Bros. Film Group has delayed Dune: Part Two to March 15, 2024, initially set to run on Nov. 3.

What is less clear is the impact on the film market, and whether buyers may opt to fill growing gaps in the theatrical release calendar with indie titles. There’s also the matter of SAG-AFTRA’s interim agreements to allow independent productions to be filmed, sold and promoted, with much uncertainty as to whether actors will refuse the waivers to stand in solidarity with their peers.

“It’s definitely a wait and see game,” Jean-Christophe J. Lamontagne (pictured right), president and founder of distributor and aggregator h264, tells Playback.

The Montreal-based company launched a sales division this June, with a slate that includes Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia (Voyelles Films), launched at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival in August, and Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms (Nemesis Films), which picked up a number of awards at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Lamontagne says the potential fallout from the strikes were “the talk of the town” at Locarno and Fantasia, but that the market activity at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the Venice Film Festival will provide a better scope as to what the real impact will be — for better or for worse.

Pros and cons

“When the majors grind to a halt, the easiest thing for them to do is to turn to the indies,” says Mark Slone, president of Toronto-based distributor Photon Films and Media. However, he warns that it may prove to be a “double-edged sword” for projects with U.S. talent unavailable to promote them, since companies won’t have the advertising budgets to make up for it.

Hilary Hart (pictured left), co-president of Toronto-based distributor Game Theory Films, has similar concerns. The company has a number of films selected for TIFF, including the drama Seagrass (Experimental Forest Films, Ceroma Films) from Vancouver filmmaker Meredith Hama-Brown, starring U.S. actor Ally Maki.

“Even if [actors] do get a waiver, they’re going to be concerned about the image of solidarity and would prefer not to do anything, which would be understandable,” says Hart. “Then we have to figure out how we build the publicity campaign without them.”

On the flip side, a more robust buying environment for indie films would be well-timed for producers, who’ve been feeling the pinch from a difficult distribution landscape, made worse by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Meanwhile, Canadian talent will be waiting in the wings to fill the red carpets left empty by their U.S. counterparts, potentially providing more press coverage than previous years.

William Woods, president of indie outfit Woods Entertainment and co-president of Game Theory Films, is a co-writer and producer on the TIFF-bound Platform competition title The King Tide (pictured above), directed by Christian Sparkes. The film is also a sales title, with Altitude Films seeking U.S. and international buyers while at the festival.

“You never want to have someone’s downfall be your advantage, but if there are outlets that can’t produce as many movies because of the strikes, maybe there’s an opportunity for the acquisitions market to be a little bit stronger,” says Woods. “But I don’t think that has proven out yet.”

A version of this story originally appeared in Playback‘s Fall 2023 issue