BY Joji Furukawa
Christopher Kline works as a production assistant and assistant cameraman in Montreal. He says there could be more done to protect the future of the film industry in the city.
“This past summer was quite quiet in general,” he says. “There weren’t a lot of local productions because every year there’s a new provincial budget and they’ve kind of really diminished how much they’re spending on local productions and helping to finance these things.”
The film industry in cities across Canada has been slumping. According to a 2024 report, total production across the country has decreased by 19 per cent to just over $9.5 billion.
An overview of the production value of Quebec’s film and TV industry. Graph by Joji Furukawa.
The Quebec industry also fell. The overall value of the province’s film and television production saw a decrease of $356 million in 2024, falling by 11 per cent compared to the year before.
“Every winter is kind of like, you’re just surviving,” Kline says. “It’s just Employment Insurance for like four to five months at times. The hardest part is when you go from doing little under-the-table jobs here and there, and then all of a sudden, once you get picked up on a gig, you’re doing 12-hour days. It’s kind of like a whiplash effect.”
Kline also says that he is not certain he wants to continue working in the city.
“I would like to go and maybe work in Toronto or something, Vancouver, whatever,” he says. “Realistically, it would suck if there was no more industry in Montreal, but I would have to just relocate.”
Simon Peacock is president of the Montreal chapter of ACTRA, which represents over 3,000 English-language actors. He says actors in the city are having to adapt to a changing industry.
“We try to do things to educate our members,” he says. “We run a lot of workshops and trainings for them to get new skills into sort of newer areas.”
One of these areas is acting for video games, which Peacock says is doing very well compared to other forms of acting due to higher demand.
Film & TV shooting sign on the sidewalk of Rue Coursol in Little Burgundy in February. Photo by Joji Furukawa.
“We were teaching actors how to do motion capture and voice work and facial capture work and all that sort of thing,” he says. “We’re just trying to make sure more and more of them are trained for that.”
He also says English-language dubbing is another area that has remained strong in the city. Streaming platforms like Netflix use dubbing extensively for different markets. They rely heavily on the skills of Montreal actors.
“We’re doing dubbing workshops,” he says. “A lot of the English dubbing is being done here in Montreal because we’ve had a long history in dubbing. We’ve got really great experience there.”
Chanelle Routhier, Quebec’s film and television commissioner, says one of the province’s strengths is its multidisciplinary industry. She says the 360 Audio visual Entertainment Week was very successful.
“Companies here in Quebec are asking us to do it again,” Routhier says. “I think it was important to position the offer of Quebec, which is quite unique in the world.”
The event was attended by international industry decision-makers and several hundred industry professionals. Routhier says that events like these really help to promote the province’s industry.
“On top of the tax incentive, we have all the creativity, innovation, new technologies, expertise, talent, locations, everything so that we’re able to dub,” she says. “So we’re really a state-of-the-art place where you can find it all.”
A look into why Montreal’s independent cinemas are doing well compared to the rest of Canada. Video by Joji Furukawa.
Though Routhier is optimistic for the future of the industry, she says that more work needs to be done to ensure its success. She says many producers from the United States are not considering Quebec and Montreal to the same extent as other cities in Canada such as Vancouver.
“When I ask them why it is that they don’t necessarily think of us, they say it’s because we’re not necessarily on their radar,” she says. “It feels like there’s still a misconception as to where things are in Canada. They tell us, ‘Oh, you’re like the best kept secret.’”
Moshe Lander, an economics professor at Concordia, says that Montreal in particular can do more to distinguish itself within the industry.
“The ability of Montreal to survive is to figure out what they do best and then focus on that obsessively,” he says. “If [the industry] continues to fight yesterday’s battles and it doesn’t learn from its errors, then there’s entirely the possibility that it gets destroyed in the process.”
Montreal’s Old Port is frequently used as a double for European cities due to its historic architecture. But as it continues to modernize, Lander says, this becomes less believable.
“It looks more and more North American,” he says. “So even there, it has to kind of evolve and realize that maybe they can’t offer it anymore, or they can only offer it in very limited locations within the city.
A wide shot of rue Saint-Paul in Montreal’s Old Port. Photo by Joji Furukawa.
He also says language legislation, such as Bill 96, has deterred some producers from considering Montreal as a production location. And the Parti Québécois promising a referendum if they take power isn’t helping things.
“That sort of uncertainty adds to the cost as well because when you’re trying to budget for a film, you don’t know if the language police are going to show up and say, right, you’re not using the correct signage, or you’re not following the law in the most precise way,” Lander says. “And so now you need to allocate resources to make sure that you’re law-compliant. That wouldn’t happen in any other jurisdiction.”
The number of international projects shot in the province has been decreasing since its peak of 198 in 2021, falling to 143 in 2022 and then to 80 in 2023.
Kline says the government could do more to promote Montreal.
“The government isn’t giving much to Montreal in general,” he says. “I think that’s kind of like making us sink a little bit lower below the water a little bit in terms of global visibility.”
Still, Kline says he will never give up on the industry.
“I’m an absurd person, and I like a little bit of chaos, and that’s exactly what film sets are,” says Kline. “We’re like travelling circuses. There was never a good movie in history that was made and it was like, easy. You always kind of need to suffer a little bit.”
