Quiet summer for Montreal’s film sets

It used to be pretty common to see movie sets on the streets of Montreal during the summer, but it’s rare these days.

According to data from the Observatoire de la culture et des communications, after hitting a historic high in 2022 and 2023, Quebec’s overall value of film and television production dropped by 11%, representing a drop of $356 million.

Even though the numbers for 2025 aren’t out yet, people in the industry aren’t seeing any signs of recovery.

“This summer actually, production in French is down,” said the President of the Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Québec (ARRQ) Gabriel Pelletier. “We had about a little more than 300 contracts for our directors. And this year, between January and April, so the same period, we were at a little less than 200. So it’s a 30% deficit compared to last year.”

“The artists are starving,” said movie director & screenwriter, Philippe Cormier. “When you pitch a project to a producer or broadcaster, you’re not paid for waiting. And this is pretty long. We can wait like several months or a year just to even get a response.”

Réjean Richard, who works in security on film sets, used to be involved in more than 20 productions each summer. Now, he says he can count them on one hand. “American productions have nearly vanished, they decreased a lot,” said the man, nearby a movie set in downtown Montreal on Monday night.

The 25-year-old movie director and screenwriter who brought Le Purgatoire des intimes is calling for more diversity in television productions.

“Broadcasters need to take more risks so we can prove them what we can do, that’s the short-term solution that I see” said Cormier. “But it’s a teamwork. I can’t make a change as an artist alone. I need the producers, the broadcasters, and the government as well.”

More expensive to produce, fiction, comedy and documentaries are the types of production mostly affected by the lack of funding.

“If the foreign streamers who are now getting most of our audiences, if they don’t contribute to our system, well, we can say goodbye to Canadian culture on screen,” added Pelletier.